10 Basic Steps to Making Great Cookies

Everyone likes cookies; kids, parents, grandparents, friends, and the list could go on.  There is just nothing much better than warm cookies right out of the oven to kids of all ages.  Baking cookies is a great way to get the kids involved in the kitchen even at an early age.  Even the little ones are so impressed by cookies “they made themselves” even though they may have only stirred the dough, added an ingredient, or sprinkled on some colored sugar decorations.  And homemade cookies are perfect for everything from welcome to the neighbor hood gifts, teacher gifts, holiday gifts, office treats, to just simply something to hand to daddy and say, “Look what I made for you”. 

Today we have some very good cookie dough in the dairy counters of our grocery stores to buckets of dough sold as fund raisers.  But baking your own good cookies is still something special.  Baking cookies with the kids is not only fun but it teaches them how to measure, a math skill they don’t even realize they are learning.  It is also a lesson in organization as ingredients are gathered before the baking begins, a lesson in working with others even if it is just the two of you, and a lesson in cleaning up as the kitchen has to be cleaned afterwards.  Even if children aren’t involved, becoming proficient with a certain cookie recipe gives one a sense of self and confidence as others come to expect and even request your “special” cookie.

Following are a few tips to help you bake great cookies from scratch, as the old-timers used to say:

Following these guidelines will help you to produce a great finished cookie product.  And most of all, have fun doing so!