How to Get Cookie Cutter Cookies to Not Grow Big

Change your cookie dough ingredients to prevent them from growing during baking.

When cookies spread in the oven, they grow in size as they cook. Spreading results from the butter in the cookies melting. To get your cookie cutter cookies to remain close to their pre-cooked size, you need to modify the recipe to decrease the amount of spreading. Vegetable shortening is the key for cookie cutter cookie dough because it melts at a higher temperature than butter, notes Harold McGee in "Keys to Good Cooking." Look for vegetable shortening in the cooking oil section of grocery stores.

Things You'll Need

• Vegetable shortening
• Egg
• Cake flour
• Parchment paper

Instructions

1. Replace the butter in the cookie recipe with an equal amount of vegetable shortening.

2. Delete the liquid from the recipe and use 1 egg for every 3 tbsp. of liquid removed from the recipe. The protein in the egg will help to hold the cookie dough together.

3. Use cake flour or pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour. Cake flour is a lower protein flour, which makes lighter, puffier cookies instead of spread-out cookies.

4. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for 12 hours to allow the eggs in the dough to bind with the flour and tighten the structure of the dough, reducing spread.

5. Roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper to prevent sticking. Cut out the cookies. Transfer the cookies to a baking pan and freeze for 30 minutes to chill them further.

6. Place the chilled cut-out cookies onto a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet and immediately bake according to your recipe.

References

• "Keys to Good Cooking"; Harold McGee; 2010
• "Cookwise"; Shirley O. Corriher; 1997
• "The Science of Good Food"; David Joachim, Andrew Schloss; 2008