Duff Goldman's #1 Tip To Avoid Cookie Disasters
There's no denying that bakery owner and television personality Duff Goldman knows his way around a kitchen. While he's best recognized for his show-stopping cakes, the man has whipped up countless sweet creations over the years, both on television and in his own bakery. His expertise has reached such a level that he even judges other bakers on shows like "Spring Baking Championship," "Holiday Baking Championship," and "Kids Baking Championship," as per Food Network.
While it may be intimidating to craft a multi-layer cake with all kinds of different fillings and decorations, one of the most approachable baked goods categories is the simple yet scrumptious cookie. Sure, there are definitely complex cookies that involve fancy techniques and require a lot more skill. However, even the basics, like a classic chocolate chip cookie, can go horribly wrong if you make a mistake or two along the way.
Over the years, Goldman has likely garnered a number of tips and tricks for making incredible baked goods. If you're constantly looking for tips to level up your cookies and try to ensure they turn out perfectly every time, you may be interested in his No. 1 tip to avoid cookie disasters. It's nothing to do with the ingredients or the time in the oven — rather, his most important tip involves the process by which you mix together your ingredients.
Treat your dry ingredients with TLC and mix them well
In order to create reliably scrumptious cookies, Duff Goldman warns that you shouldn't skip the step of thoroughly mixing together the dry ingredients, as he told Delish. Particularly if you're combining everything in one bowl, it can be incredibly tempting to just add in all the dry ingredients rather than following the recipe's advice to mix them together separately before combining them with the wet ingredients. However, this step isn't something added to recipes just to make them more difficult — it serves a purpose.
As Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking explains, mixing the dry ingredients together thoroughly first will help ensure that they're all distributed throughout your dough in an even way. While this is important when you're adding in spices like cinnamon or salt for flavor, it also helps prevent overmixing, which can result in tough cookies. It's perhaps most crucial with your leavening agents, like baking soda or baking powder. As Goldman said, while failing to evenly incorporate the spices may result in an overly salty cookie, for example, the leavening agents are critical to how your cookie turns out. If they aren't incorporated evenly throughout the dough, you may end up getting one leavening-packed cookie while others will remain flat and unappealing.
And in terms of mixing order, once you've ensured your dry ingredients are all mixed together, Cook's Illustrated recommends adding your dry ingredients into your wet ingredients, rather than the other way around, for best results.