The Best Way To Cool Cookies, According To Duff Goldman
Very few things are as scrumptious as homemade cookies. They are sheer perfection. The trick is to keep them that way. After all, no one wants sugary lumps of cardboard. Or sweetened clumps of sawdust. So, how do you ensure that your mouth-watering creations attain those sought-after crispy edges wrapped around a delectable chewy center? One important-but-often-overlooked consideration is the cooling down process. Yes, a common mistake everyone makes when baking cookies is failing to let them cool properly.
It seems like bakers from all corners of the globe have advice to offer on how best to cool down your cookies. The single most spouted edict of cookie-cooling, however, is to put them on a rack. Why? It turns out that the key to cookie perfection is to cool them off quickly, halting the baking process in its tracks. As Better Homes & Gardens reveals, a cookie rack enables air to reach all 360 degrees of your baked gems. Yes, no surface will go uncooled. What if you live in a rack-free home? No need to fret. There are a plethora of other things that will work. Livestrong offers that you can use your BBQ grill, a rack from your oven, a sushi mat, or you can fashion your own rack using chopsticks.
None of this will matter, however, if you don't first follow Duff Goldman's wise advice.
Parchment paper: a cookie's best friend
Duff Goldman recently appeared on CBS Los Angeles to promote his cookbook, "Duff Goldman's Super Good Cookies for Kids." During this visit, he shared an easy-to-follow cookie hack that is a baking game-changer. It involves parchment paper and a cooling rack (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). According to Goldman, when you take your cookies out of the oven, they keep cooking until the pan cools down, leading to an overcooked final product. Instead, he recommends putting them on a cooling rack as soon as you take them out of the oven. By cooking them on parchment paper, you can easily transfer them by simply transporting paper, cookies, and all to the rack. Goldman adds that the best part of the cookie is the brown crispy stuff. If you cook them directly on the pan, that "sticks to your pan instead of going in your mouth." Such a waste. Parchment paper allows you to enjoy those golden bites.
It turns out that this is one of the things that parchment paper was designed for. Yes, according to the folks at Reynolds, this product is perfect for "transferring cookies to and from a baking sheet," including putting them on your rack to cool the minute they come out of the oven. Not only will your cookie sheet stay spick and span, but you will also achieve five-star cookies. Just remember. Be patient and let those cookies cool before digging in. Yum. Cookies.