Melt in your mouth orange vanilla cookies recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to chewy cookies? ›

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

Why did my thumbprint cookies spread? Your cookies may have spread because of the temperature of the butter. Fat makes baked goods spread. Try putting your dough in the refrigerator for an hour before baking/rolling to avoid cookies spreading.

Orange extract is a highly concentrated flavoring made from oranges. It is commonly used in baking, as it is a more intense form of orange flavor than adding juice or zest to recipes. Compared to orange juice, orange extract will give you a stronger orange flavor without the added liquid content.

Use a higher ratio of white to brown sugar

While brown sugar keeps your cookies moist and soft, white sugar and corn syrup will help your cookies spread and crisp in the oven. Using more white sugar in your cookies will result in a crispier end product.

Bread Flour: For Chewy Texture

Bread flour contains a higher protein content (around 12-14%), leading to more gluten development. This makes it ideal for bakers seeking a chewier texture in their cookies. The extra gluten can help retain gas and moisture, producing a denser and chewier result.

Bake the dough: Bake the coated dough balls until slightly puffed. Fill with jam: Use your thumb to press a dent into each cookie. Fill the thumbprint with jam. Finish baking: Continue baking until set.

One of the biggest questions that people ask after making thumbprint cookies is, “Why did my cookies crack?” Cracking usually happens when making the indentations in the dough balls. There are a few things you can do to help avoid this: Make sure you haven't added too much flour to the dough.

Oven temperatures are a crucial factor in baking. If your cookies consistently come out flat, you may have selected the wrong baking temperature. If you bake cookies using too much heat, the fats in the dough begin to melt before the other ingredients can cook together and form your cookie's rise.

Those include (in order of increasing strength of flavor) dried zest (dehydrated grated zest packaged with a preservative), extract (a mixture of alcohol, water, and orange oil), or oil (cold pressed from orange rind).

Clementines are a type of mandarin oranges, an ideal option to substitute orange zest. Therefore, they have a deep color and are sweeter than regular oranges. Like oranges, these fruits have a tangy flavor profile.

Are orange peel and orange zest the same thing? ›

The orange-colored rind is the very outer part of the peel, and the pith, which is a white-ish color, is the part between the rind and the orange's delectable juicy center. The rind—and only the rind—provides zest.

The job of butter in baking (besides being delicious) is to give richness, tenderness and structure to cookies, cakes, pies and pastries. We alter the way butter works in a recipe by changing its temperature and choosing when to combine it with the other ingredients.

Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more. With less moisture escaping via steam, they also stay moist and chewy.

As Quora User says, it's about moisture. More moisture means less crunchiness. You can make your cookies crunchier by using ingredients with less water. It's hard to decrease the water content of the eggs, but you can use lower-water fat and sweetener.

The best way to soften up those hard cookies is something you probably already have in your kitchen… bread! That's right, a piece of fresh bread will make those tough treats soft and chewy.

Excess Sugar and Fat

If your cookie contains excess sugar or fat, it will spread while baking. If your first batch of cookies spreads, try adding a few tablespoons of flour to help thicken the remaining dough.

Use Melted Butter

If the goal is a chewy cookie, then you absolutely need to be using melted butter. The technique of creaming softened butter and sugar together is often used for making cakes. And for good reason! The process of creaming incorporates air into the butter which results in a more airy and cakey cookie.

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.