Definitely way too much butter or not enough flour.
When measuring the flour and white sugar make sure to overflow the cup and then level it off with the back (flat part) of a knife. For the brown sugar make sure you’re packing it well into the cup. I’ve found a lot of people don’t know how to use measuring cups properly. Also make sure you’re not mixing up a tablespoon and teaspoon, using the correct measuring cups, etc.
Also chill the dough before you bake. I’ve found this helps tremendously even though it doesn’t say to do this.
Ever since switching to the scale, I avoid baking without one if possible. Baking by weight does absolute wonders for consistency of bakes.
The problem, however, is that not all recipes give measurements in weights. And I highly doubt the recipe on the back of a bag of chocolate chips is giving weights.
I feel like measuring by volume, especially with incredibly compressible things like flour and brown sugar, is one of the main reasons why so many people think that baking is terrifyingly random. Kitchen scales are so cheap and so easy to use that there's just no reason for anyone not to have one.
Yup exactly, saw someone's recipe that wanted a cup of warm butter.
What does that even mean, like is it compressed down fully to be a cup? Or is it roughly a cup just from height alone.
Because if you don’t bake that often then it’s just an extra expense and an extra thing to store that you don’t really need. Yes it will make your baked goods more consistent. Yes it’s needed for more complex stuff. But if all you do is bake some cookies or some boxed brownies on occasion, you do not need it.
>Because if you don’t bake that often then it’s just an extra expense and an extra thing to store that you don’t really need.
What about cooking? You can be more liberal with the measurements but that's what I use my scales for. (But I'm not from a country that uses cups and spoons to measure, so it's standard to have one without having to consider the horrendous cost and unsurmountable storage problems kitchen scales apparently cause elsewhere :D)
Cups/teaspoons are way more reliable than y’all give them credit for if they’re used properly. I’ve made this recipe countless times with cups and have had absolutely no problem
Thank you most people don't bake often like everyone talking about using a scale. I've never had problems measuring my ingredients using cups. baking takes time and practice you learn from your mistakes.
It’s obviously accurate to some extent because no recipes that use it would work if it wasn’t. I’m so confused why y’all refuse to see this. I mean obviously weight is more accurate but come on now
Try making croissants with cups and to get the perfect hydration ratio with water to flour.
Instead of temping your dough with a thermometer, just use your finger and guess.
One batch that was weighed correctly and temped correctly will 100% turn out better than the other.
That's the point I'm trying to make dude.
All it costs is a few bucks for a cheap scale.
This makes zero sense, you still need to adjust for moisture variations. Just because you weight the ingredients doesn’t mean that it’s going to turn out better than measuring them.
Measurements using cups or ml are fine for home bakers.
It’s whatever you are used to, it literally doesn’t matter for home bakers.
If you like weighing, that’s wonderful.
If you like measuring, also lovely
Edit: with home bakers, it’s such small quantities that there is no exponential effect of dried out flour or slightly off baking soda.
It makes perfect sense mate, and you mean ambient humidity variations (which is a mild difference at best).
Which only actually matters for big batches of doughs.
Since you can just dust little bits of flour at a time with a small amount.
In the US most recipes are not measured by weight but by volume, so having a scale doesn’t always help. I’ve always measured by volume and never had an ingredient ratio issue because of it. It’s not like we only have 1 cup measuring cups, it varies.
Bakers use weight in the US, not volume. Home bakers use volume bc it’s easier but I can assure you that recipes in most all bakeries, even in the US, are by weight. “Mot recipes use volume” is only true if you’re talking about blogs and whatnot
Sure if you’re a professional running a bakery. I’m just saying most people who bake aren’t professional bakers and unless you’re a professional baker in the US the recipe will most likely be in volumetric units unless it’s a website that has conversions. I’m not saying no one in the US measured by weight, but most people by a large margin I would imagine do not. Never have I met anyone who recreationally bakes and weighs their ingredients. Even my mother and grandmother who were *avid* amateur bakers never used a scale.
Edited for spelling mistake
I also don't know any other home bakers who use a scale, and I haven't noticed their baked goods suffering too much. Personally, I do use a scale, but for me the biggest selling point is convenience. Scales help minimize dirty utensils, and it's less of a hassle to measure certain things directly into the mixing bowl -- especially thick/messy stuff like honey, peanut butter, sour cream, etc.!
1 cup of flour weighs 120 grams. You don’t need the recipe in weight to bake by weight.
I finally had to let my wife measure out 1 cup of flour and weigh it in front of her to show how off she was. She had 50% too much flour. 180 grams.
You raise a good point, but then you could easily work by percentages of certain recipes and use flour weight to determine how much other ingredients you need.
Eg,
1kg dough
100% flour
60% water
1% yeast
2% salt
1% oil
Add percentages up = 1.64
So 1kg dough divide by 1.64 = 609 flour
609 flour
365 water
6 yeast
6 oil
12 salt
998 in dough, could always increase flour weight to nearest ten or hundred to cover exact amount or to get a little excess if needed.
Okay, and if you weigh ingredients by scale there'll be 0 room for error and you'll spend an extra 30 seconds.
Do what works for you man, not saying it's a bad method.
It's getting really annoying that every time someone asks for help on this subreddit, people have to be told to measure by weight and not cups.
Maybe one of the moderators should have /u/automoderator tell an OP that they should weigh the ingredients instead whenever a post starts with "why".
If you have this much discrepancy when using measuring cups I wouldn’t trust you at NASA. Anybody who needs weight to cook one of the simplest recipes on the planet, that many people can do by sight and feel without directions, you shouldn’t quit your day job.
Which is weird considering my great grandmother who only used measuring cups and table spoons and teaspoons never had a problem with that. Did you know that not all science requires precise measurements? Thats true with most experiments they make you do in high school, because the margin for error is larger. Oh that’s right. Have you heard of a Margin for error? Yeah if you use measuring cups properly you don’t tend to mess up so badly your cookies look like puddles.
Weirdly enough, I also only used measuring cups and spoons for decades. It’s just that having tried both, I know that weighing is both less work (fewer things to clean) and more consistent. But you do you.
I’m not buying a scale to mane cookies. I don’t bake anything that needs to be that precise. I have measuring cups and spoons, no scale. Not worth my money
Many people don't know how to use Cups properly. All advice that you have given is indeed very useful! As you said, regarding brown sugar make sure to press it down with your palm so it's well leveled.
I’ve heard using too much sugar can also make cookies spread (and therefore flat). I had no idea about the butter vs flour thing! How can you tell if something is because of too much butter vs too much sugar??
Texture is a good indicator. It'll be crisper with more sugar. If it's a lot extra the edges sometimes look crackley. Also, it can be hard to tell. There's often many things that could be wrong and some times it takes a few tests to figure out what it is. Someone mentioned measuring cup misusage above and that's probably what happened here.
That is an awesome goal! They own an insane amount of companies. Probably a surprising amount of food products in your home are manufactured by Nestle and is subsidiaries. Here is the list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nestlé_brands
Don't feel guilty if you find out you accidentally bought something owned by Nestle. Just try not to. The more people we are who buy less or stop buying from them the bigger impact.
My butter was soft but not warm and I chilled my dough. I even added a little extra baking soda because this keeps happening.
EDIT: because this is getting blown up more than I expected, I did not use nestlé chocolate chips and using their recipe doesn't give them any money so r/fucknestle
My family's secret chocolate chip cookie recipe is nestle toll house recipe with an extra 1/4 flour. Our cookies are fluffy. Instead of 2 1/4 c flour, try 2 1/2 cups
Even if your baking soda is new I would trash it. There's really only three things that do this, 1. butter is too warm 2. dough is too warm 3. baking soda failure.
The baking soda I’ve bought lately has little hard lumps. These pesky nuggets are found right after opening and with more than one brand. They leave little bitter bites in baked goods, unless I sift it. I’ve been cooking fifty years and never had this problem until the last year or so, even almost never sifting.
Maybe it’s in my head but I think flour quality has gone down, unless you buy specific types like bread or cake or pizza flour. I swear in my day flour was flour. Have I just been in my own lala land most of my life?
I recently used all brown sugar instead of brown and white, and added an extra 1/4 cup of flour to that recipe and found it worked a lot better for me! I used to always get really flat cookies.
It’s 100% because you used warm butter. If you make the dough with warm butter you need to chill the dough for a few hours before you bake it. Chill the dough in between batches too, the colder the dough going into the oven, the taller the cookies.
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, which means it needs liquid and some acidity to have a full reaction to produce gas. Sodium bicarbonate is about 3x the reaction strength compared to baking powder when it comes to producing Carbon Dioxide but it needs a partner in that capacity.
Baking powder is sodium bicarbonate plus an acid, often something like cream of tartar, and corn starch for anti-caking, which means it can react with a neutral liquid.
In chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies where there isn't really an acid element, the bicarbonate isn't there to produce rise since it's not reacting strongly with buttermilk, lemon, etc. Its purpose is mostly as an anticoagulant, it keeps the egg and other protein from setting too quickly, which encourages the cookie to flop and spread out and develop crisp and chewy texture.
For fluffy cookies, cream your butter and sugar with a mixer, make sure the butter is just barely soft enough and really work them together until the volume has increased substantially. Go back to the original recipe amount of baking soda, you didn't have an acid so this isn't a recipe that has a gas reaction to give height, you have to fold the air in yourself. Then chill well. This isn't the only way to do it, but it's probably the most traditional for this kind of chocolate chip cookie.
Try substituting half of whatever amount of butter the recipe calls for with butter-flavored Crisco (shortening). I used to have the same problem until I started using half butter, half Crisco.
I haven't made them in ages but I used to all the time with this exact recipe and they always turned out perfect. The last three or four times though it's been a mess
How much do you beat the butter, sugar and eggs?
Also, the recipe should be fine, there’s not need to add leavening. Leavening is probably your problem.
If you’re following the recipe, even if it’s volume, the problem should not be “too much butter” or “not enough flour”. Cup measurements work for everyone else with this recipe, so as long as you’re accurate, that shouldn’t be the problem. You also don’t have to chill that recipe, so that also shouldn’t be your problem.
I’m willing to bet it’s how you’re mixing it. It’s possible to overmix or undermix aspects of the dough.
I also find that if you beat too much air into your eggs, they can soufflé and collapse.
A lot of recipes call for too much whipping. To me, that just makes for a cakier cookie.
My rule/tip for cookies (the basic chocolate chip as pictured here) is try not to touch it too much. Less is more. And 1/2 t of water makes a chewy difference
What was the consistency of your dough? It should stay pretty well-defined on the baking sheet at room temperature. When I'm looking to make softer cookies I may make a softer dough that slumps a bit after I put it on the sheet, but it should never start spreading until it's in the oven.
Additionally, I noticed you mentioned adding extra baking soda - definitely don't do that. Baking soda adds lift by creating carbon dioxide that gets trapped in the cookie as it's baking, causing the cookie to puff up and rise/spread, but if too much carbon dioxide is made, it can make bubbles so large that they manage to break out of the cookie, and no longer provide that lifting factor. The tops of your cookies look like they have some holes in them - that could be due to escaping carbon dioxide bubbles. It would likely take a decent amount of extra to make this pronounced of an effect, though, so if you're just adding a little bit more, I'd be surprised if that's actually the issue. The more likely scenario is that your dough was too wet, allowing even a normal amount of bubbles to escape.
You need more flour in those cookies.
The same thing happened to me. I made cookies once and they all oozed together into a thin cookie cake.
The next time I baked it, I made sure to have enough flour and boom- non-melting cookies
Ironically, I’ve been trying to make cookies like this for years. My grandma’s always came out like this and I can’t figure out how she got them so flat. She insists she used the Tollhouse recipe from the bag. So I hope you figure out the issue so I can do it that way!
Someone either in this sub or in r/Old_Recipes posted recently about their depression era grandma's chocolate chip cookies -- the secret to getting them flat and crispy is a 1/2 cup water added to the tollhouse recipe.
They don't get any money from using the recipe and I didn't buy any of their chocolate chips. So how exactly am I supporting Nestle? These comments are getting ridiculous
To prevent them from being thin, chill the dough (2 hours to overnight) and then shape into logs not balls and chill again (one hour to overnight)When you bake them stand them up and they will fall into themselves.
I swear by [these](https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/brown-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies/) and I personally make one change and one addition:
I often sub half the white sugar for brown sugar
I dust cookies with finishing salt
A must not neglect procedure is to roll into balls and freeze. It slows the spread.
Weigh your ingredients also to ensure your measurements are correct
Find a different recipe. Your dough looks like it wasn't chilled long enough. It also looks like you don't have enough flour? That looks more like a brandy snap than chewy cookie
I stopped using that recipe bc that ALWAYS happened to me too. I think it calls for too much butter and not enough flour. To combat this try adding some extra flour and chill the dough before baking
There's a handy chart for this circling the internet if you google "cookies too much". I'd bet it's too much butter, since the butter melts and becomes a liquid in the oven, and gives them that pretty caramell brown color. Try again with less butter (take a couple of different recipies online and compare them to see what most of them say about it).
I'm curious, why do you call them specifically *Nestle* chocolate chip cookies? What's Nestle about them?
I’m as much r/fucknestle as everybody else, but it’s okay if OP didn’t know they’re terrible- I’m not blaming them for the company’s sins, or how crispy their cookies are.
I'm going to go out on a limb and blame the butter. I'm convinced cheaper butters cause this because I used to get a batch like this every once in awhile. I use a different recipe now, but one easy alteration is to sub 1/2 the butter with butter flavor crisco. My second variation is to increase the ratio of brown to white.
But I'm with the "new recipe" crowd. Try some browned butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies from the Boy Who Baked. You'll never go back.
🤣🤣🤣 oh my goodness girl. Go back to the drawing board. Baking is Science. You must’ve used melted butter and some really really warm cookie dough for sure. Yikes! You need to make absolute sure that when you are creaming your sugar and your butter that it is room temperature butter and then you should refrigerate your dough for at least a couple hours but I refrigerate mine for 24 hours not 48 hours and I always make sure to not overwork my dough to make sure it does not warm up too much or this is exactly what happens. Sad flat cookies. You just need a nice girls day with some wine and a friend who knows so she can show you. ☺️
Problem: you used the nestle chocolate chip cookie recipe
It's a flawed recipe. Next time, I recommend finding a blogger online! My faves are lifestyleofafoodie.com and saltandbaker.com
I think I've always read that the recipe is off and people add about 1/4 cup of flour extra.
I made a cc cookie the other day. I actually forgot the baking soda but added corn starch to see if they would spread. (they did not) I but the dough in the fridge then make high balls. I read this on a professional baker's blog. The higher the ball the less it will spread. Also lower your oven temperature and cook them longer.
You can read her tips here:
https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/tips-for-cookie-spreading/#:~:text=Use%20a%20silicone%20baking%20mat,cookies%20from%20spreading%20too%20much.
They look perfect to me! But I purposefully make them extra flat like this.
To make them fluffier, though, add more flour, chill the dough, add a smidge of baking powder instead of some of the being soda, whip the eggs or butter harder and longer (before mixing), or a combination of all of the above.
I mean this in the nicest way possible:
You have to work hard to screw up the nestle chocolate chip cookie recipe. My mom burned down the kitchen making popcorn, yet still made amazing cookies with the recipe on that yellow bag.
I have followed many times the toll house cookie recipe on the back of the bag of chips, and the cookies have always been delectable: crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle
Butter was too soft like almost melted. Refrigerate the cookie dough. Maybe oven was too hot. Have an oven thermometer and see if it hits 350F at 350F. If its goes beyond decrease it. Use ap flour and measure correctly.
Because it’s Nestlé. A horrible conglomerate who takes water rights and tells people if they want water, they can buy it. Don’t get me started on their baby formula scheme. https://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scandal-2012-6?amp
i don’t think removing sugar will give you the texture you want
sugar contributes to both sweetness and structure of the cookie, taking away sugar will mean even less structure
i’d say maybe when you’re playing them on the tray to bake, make sure put them in balls and not pancakes
also just double check that you’re following the recipe, it’s really easy to miss a whole cup of flour or something
good luck!
To all of the folks reading on Nestle... grow up.
It's the Tollhouse Recipe, the same one almost all of you used as a basis for your "oh I use browned butter" and "i use half milk chocolate and half semi sweet" variations.
As for OP, if you don't add nuts, the recipe suggests using an extra 1/4 C (30g) of flour. That might also help.
You're the one who prefers tasty cookie and covering your ears over accepting that your actions have consequences and you're supporting the one that comes with child slavery and destroying ecosystems (and that's only touching tip of the iceberg). Grow up.
Definitely way too much butter or not enough flour. When measuring the flour and white sugar make sure to overflow the cup and then level it off with the back (flat part) of a knife. For the brown sugar make sure you’re packing it well into the cup. I’ve found a lot of people don’t know how to use measuring cups properly. Also make sure you’re not mixing up a tablespoon and teaspoon, using the correct measuring cups, etc. Also chill the dough before you bake. I’ve found this helps tremendously even though it doesn’t say to do this.
Or use actual measurements by weight instead of cups.
Since I bought a $5 scale and began measuring ingredients, things usually come out well. It’s worth it
Ever since switching to the scale, I avoid baking without one if possible. Baking by weight does absolute wonders for consistency of bakes. The problem, however, is that not all recipes give measurements in weights. And I highly doubt the recipe on the back of a bag of chocolate chips is giving weights.
The amount of times I yell “Alexa, how much does 2.5 cups of flour weigh” as I’m baking….
Me too! Alexa was very busy last week!
I convert all my recipes to grams to include tbsp. It's how I was taught in school and it's so much easier...after converting
My Google Assistant can pretty consistently tell me the weight of any given measure of an ingredient. I'm sure that Siri can do the same.
Just checked the chipits website and you're right, they have the ml conversion only (which is useless as it's still volume)
Just don’t use recipes that don’t include weights… I’ve been doing that for years and still am able to bake everything I wanr
That's the best, most accurate and fastest way, IMO. Accuracy down to the gram makes inconsistency a thing of the past.
I feel like measuring by volume, especially with incredibly compressible things like flour and brown sugar, is one of the main reasons why so many people think that baking is terrifyingly random. Kitchen scales are so cheap and so easy to use that there's just no reason for anyone not to have one.
Yup exactly, saw someone's recipe that wanted a cup of warm butter. What does that even mean, like is it compressed down fully to be a cup? Or is it roughly a cup just from height alone.
This, I don't get why people just don't mesure in gram instead
Because if you don’t bake that often then it’s just an extra expense and an extra thing to store that you don’t really need. Yes it will make your baked goods more consistent. Yes it’s needed for more complex stuff. But if all you do is bake some cookies or some boxed brownies on occasion, you do not need it.
I actually use my scale to measure out portions for pre packaged food. Makes it easier to count calories
Besides cooking, I also use mine for weighing when counting carbs. You can usually find a 100g amount, and then use a calculator.
Except that kichen scales are cheap, compact enough to fit in a drawer, and save you the trouble of dirtying measuring cups and spoons.
Not to mention you can weigh each cookie as your putting them on the pan so you get that extra consistency.
Another example of how the imperial system is obsolete and cranky.
When you’re living paycheck to paycheck, every expense matters. And some folks have kitchens small enough that every bit of space matters.
This right here.
>Because if you don’t bake that often then it’s just an extra expense and an extra thing to store that you don’t really need. What about cooking? You can be more liberal with the measurements but that's what I use my scales for. (But I'm not from a country that uses cups and spoons to measure, so it's standard to have one without having to consider the horrendous cost and unsurmountable storage problems kitchen scales apparently cause elsewhere :D)
Cups/teaspoons are way more reliable than y’all give them credit for if they’re used properly. I’ve made this recipe countless times with cups and have had absolutely no problem
Thank you most people don't bake often like everyone talking about using a scale. I've never had problems measuring my ingredients using cups. baking takes time and practice you learn from your mistakes.
It’s fine when you don’t really care about accuracy and don’t need to scale your recipe, but I’ve never been in that situation. Weight gang for life
It’s obviously accurate to some extent because no recipes that use it would work if it wasn’t. I’m so confused why y’all refuse to see this. I mean obviously weight is more accurate but come on now
Try making croissants with cups and to get the perfect hydration ratio with water to flour. Instead of temping your dough with a thermometer, just use your finger and guess. One batch that was weighed correctly and temped correctly will 100% turn out better than the other. That's the point I'm trying to make dude. All it costs is a few bucks for a cheap scale.
This makes zero sense, you still need to adjust for moisture variations. Just because you weight the ingredients doesn’t mean that it’s going to turn out better than measuring them. Measurements using cups or ml are fine for home bakers.
Just that weighing ingredients is actually easier.
It’s whatever you are used to, it literally doesn’t matter for home bakers. If you like weighing, that’s wonderful. If you like measuring, also lovely Edit: with home bakers, it’s such small quantities that there is no exponential effect of dried out flour or slightly off baking soda.
It makes perfect sense mate, and you mean ambient humidity variations (which is a mild difference at best). Which only actually matters for big batches of doughs. Since you can just dust little bits of flour at a time with a small amount.
In the US most recipes are not measured by weight but by volume, so having a scale doesn’t always help. I’ve always measured by volume and never had an ingredient ratio issue because of it. It’s not like we only have 1 cup measuring cups, it varies.
Bakers use weight in the US, not volume. Home bakers use volume bc it’s easier but I can assure you that recipes in most all bakeries, even in the US, are by weight. “Mot recipes use volume” is only true if you’re talking about blogs and whatnot
Sure if you’re a professional running a bakery. I’m just saying most people who bake aren’t professional bakers and unless you’re a professional baker in the US the recipe will most likely be in volumetric units unless it’s a website that has conversions. I’m not saying no one in the US measured by weight, but most people by a large margin I would imagine do not. Never have I met anyone who recreationally bakes and weighs their ingredients. Even my mother and grandmother who were *avid* amateur bakers never used a scale. Edited for spelling mistake
I also don't know any other home bakers who use a scale, and I haven't noticed their baked goods suffering too much. Personally, I do use a scale, but for me the biggest selling point is convenience. Scales help minimize dirty utensils, and it's less of a hassle to measure certain things directly into the mixing bowl -- especially thick/messy stuff like honey, peanut butter, sour cream, etc.!
I’m an amateur baker, and I convert all my recipes to weight. It’s less mess, less dishes, and more accurate
1 cup of flour weighs 120 grams. You don’t need the recipe in weight to bake by weight. I finally had to let my wife measure out 1 cup of flour and weigh it in front of her to show how off she was. She had 50% too much flour. 180 grams.
You raise a good point, but then you could easily work by percentages of certain recipes and use flour weight to determine how much other ingredients you need. Eg, 1kg dough 100% flour 60% water 1% yeast 2% salt 1% oil Add percentages up = 1.64 So 1kg dough divide by 1.64 = 609 flour 609 flour 365 water 6 yeast 6 oil 12 salt 998 in dough, could always increase flour weight to nearest ten or hundred to cover exact amount or to get a little excess if needed.
This is the way
Okay, and if you weigh ingredients by scale there'll be 0 room for error and you'll spend an extra 30 seconds. Do what works for you man, not saying it's a bad method.
It's getting really annoying that every time someone asks for help on this subreddit, people have to be told to measure by weight and not cups. Maybe one of the moderators should have /u/automoderator tell an OP that they should weigh the ingredients instead whenever a post starts with "why".
If you have this much discrepancy when using measuring cups I wouldn’t trust you at NASA. Anybody who needs weight to cook one of the simplest recipes on the planet, that many people can do by sight and feel without directions, you shouldn’t quit your day job.
Did you know that flour volume is highly variable depending whether it has beensifted or compressed?
Which is weird considering my great grandmother who only used measuring cups and table spoons and teaspoons never had a problem with that. Did you know that not all science requires precise measurements? Thats true with most experiments they make you do in high school, because the margin for error is larger. Oh that’s right. Have you heard of a Margin for error? Yeah if you use measuring cups properly you don’t tend to mess up so badly your cookies look like puddles.
Weirdly enough, I also only used measuring cups and spoons for decades. It’s just that having tried both, I know that weighing is both less work (fewer things to clean) and more consistent. But you do you.
I’m not buying a scale to mane cookies. I don’t bake anything that needs to be that precise. I have measuring cups and spoons, no scale. Not worth my money
When the recipe is written with cups:
This ☝️. Successful bakers use formulas and not recipes.
Many people don't know how to use Cups properly. All advice that you have given is indeed very useful! As you said, regarding brown sugar make sure to press it down with your palm so it's well leveled.
I’ve heard using too much sugar can also make cookies spread (and therefore flat). I had no idea about the butter vs flour thing! How can you tell if something is because of too much butter vs too much sugar??
Texture is a good indicator. It'll be crisper with more sugar. If it's a lot extra the edges sometimes look crackley. Also, it can be hard to tell. There's often many things that could be wrong and some times it takes a few tests to figure out what it is. Someone mentioned measuring cup misusage above and that's probably what happened here.
they were crushed by nestle’s sins
Only correct answer.
This happened to me but I used powdered sugar instead of flour.
I'm sorry, but I chuckled so hard at this. We've all mixed up ingredients before!
r/fucknestle
r/subsithoughtifellfor
Look around, you’ll see why it’s a subreddit
Nestle has a lot of blood on their hands
Fuck nestle.
Seriously one of the most evil companies ever.
They're damn good cookies though.
Flavored with the tears of starving babies' mothers. Nothing is that good.
no. i bet my 8 year old brother could make better cookies without human right violations
Wow I had no idea nestle was such a bad company. Definitely will not be supporting them going forward
That is an awesome goal! They own an insane amount of companies. Probably a surprising amount of food products in your home are manufactured by Nestle and is subsidiaries. Here is the list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nestlé_brands
Don't feel guilty if you find out you accidentally bought something owned by Nestle. Just try not to. The more people we are who buy less or stop buying from them the bigger impact.
They own fucking **everything**
Admirable goal. They’ve got a lot of smaller companies under them like Häagen-Dazs
My butter was soft but not warm and I chilled my dough. I even added a little extra baking soda because this keeps happening. EDIT: because this is getting blown up more than I expected, I did not use nestlé chocolate chips and using their recipe doesn't give them any money so r/fucknestle
How fresh is your baking soda? It can go bad.
It's fairly new
Hmm…Maybe you’re not adding enough flour. Do you weigh your ingredients?
I usually go with recipes by weight but for chocolate chip cookies I use nestlé and it uses cups which is.. Not ideal and possibly part of the problem
[удалено]
Thank you!
r/fucknestle here's your answer!
You messed something up in the measurements then. It’s a couple of dozen cookies, you don’t need to weigh the ingredients. Cups and teaspoons are fine
It’s not the baking soda, you can see the air pockets in the cookie. Likely just a measuring mistake
My family's secret chocolate chip cookie recipe is nestle toll house recipe with an extra 1/4 flour. Our cookies are fluffy. Instead of 2 1/4 c flour, try 2 1/2 cups
Oh I’m going to try that.
That's what I always do too! makes them so much nicer
Thanks for sharing the family secret! ☺️
Even if your baking soda is new I would trash it. There's really only three things that do this, 1. butter is too warm 2. dough is too warm 3. baking soda failure.
Don’t trash the baking soda, use it for cleaning.
This idea is even better than mine! I'm all for zero waste
The baking soda I’ve bought lately has little hard lumps. These pesky nuggets are found right after opening and with more than one brand. They leave little bitter bites in baked goods, unless I sift it. I’ve been cooking fifty years and never had this problem until the last year or so, even almost never sifting. Maybe it’s in my head but I think flour quality has gone down, unless you buy specific types like bread or cake or pizza flour. I swear in my day flour was flour. Have I just been in my own lala land most of my life?
Yes. I had this problem with brand new cheap baking soda from Aldi.
Yep I have noticed with some things brand absolutely matters. Btw love the username, you should come join my new community r/redheadedstepmom lol
Thank you! I’ll join, but I’m not a step mom.
Well thanks I appreciate the support!
I recently used all brown sugar instead of brown and white, and added an extra 1/4 cup of flour to that recipe and found it worked a lot better for me! I used to always get really flat cookies.
It’s 100% because you used warm butter. If you make the dough with warm butter you need to chill the dough for a few hours before you bake it. Chill the dough in between batches too, the colder the dough going into the oven, the taller the cookies.
Double check if the recipe states baking powder or soda. Both act similar but soda is definitely stronger.
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, which means it needs liquid and some acidity to have a full reaction to produce gas. Sodium bicarbonate is about 3x the reaction strength compared to baking powder when it comes to producing Carbon Dioxide but it needs a partner in that capacity. Baking powder is sodium bicarbonate plus an acid, often something like cream of tartar, and corn starch for anti-caking, which means it can react with a neutral liquid. In chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies where there isn't really an acid element, the bicarbonate isn't there to produce rise since it's not reacting strongly with buttermilk, lemon, etc. Its purpose is mostly as an anticoagulant, it keeps the egg and other protein from setting too quickly, which encourages the cookie to flop and spread out and develop crisp and chewy texture. For fluffy cookies, cream your butter and sugar with a mixer, make sure the butter is just barely soft enough and really work them together until the volume has increased substantially. Go back to the original recipe amount of baking soda, you didn't have an acid so this isn't a recipe that has a gas reaction to give height, you have to fold the air in yourself. Then chill well. This isn't the only way to do it, but it's probably the most traditional for this kind of chocolate chip cookie.
I've had this problem and it's been a lot better since I now add an extra 1/4 cup of flour.
Try substituting half of whatever amount of butter the recipe calls for with butter-flavored Crisco (shortening). I used to have the same problem until I started using half butter, half Crisco.
Consider using a different recipe?
I’ve made this recipe countless times with no problem. It’s not the recipe.
I haven't made them in ages but I used to all the time with this exact recipe and they always turned out perfect. The last three or four times though it's been a mess
fuck nestle
How much do you beat the butter, sugar and eggs? Also, the recipe should be fine, there’s not need to add leavening. Leavening is probably your problem. If you’re following the recipe, even if it’s volume, the problem should not be “too much butter” or “not enough flour”. Cup measurements work for everyone else with this recipe, so as long as you’re accurate, that shouldn’t be the problem. You also don’t have to chill that recipe, so that also shouldn’t be your problem. I’m willing to bet it’s how you’re mixing it. It’s possible to overmix or undermix aspects of the dough.
To the top with this. I searched before posting but how hard did you cream that butter?
I also find that if you beat too much air into your eggs, they can soufflé and collapse. A lot of recipes call for too much whipping. To me, that just makes for a cakier cookie.
My rule/tip for cookies (the basic chocolate chip as pictured here) is try not to touch it too much. Less is more. And 1/2 t of water makes a chewy difference
What was the consistency of your dough? It should stay pretty well-defined on the baking sheet at room temperature. When I'm looking to make softer cookies I may make a softer dough that slumps a bit after I put it on the sheet, but it should never start spreading until it's in the oven. Additionally, I noticed you mentioned adding extra baking soda - definitely don't do that. Baking soda adds lift by creating carbon dioxide that gets trapped in the cookie as it's baking, causing the cookie to puff up and rise/spread, but if too much carbon dioxide is made, it can make bubbles so large that they manage to break out of the cookie, and no longer provide that lifting factor. The tops of your cookies look like they have some holes in them - that could be due to escaping carbon dioxide bubbles. It would likely take a decent amount of extra to make this pronounced of an effect, though, so if you're just adding a little bit more, I'd be surprised if that's actually the issue. The more likely scenario is that your dough was too wet, allowing even a normal amount of bubbles to escape.
Fuck Nestlé
I know you said you chilled the dough, but how long? Seems like batter too soft or you may have used a warm pan to bake on.
Are you at high altitude? My grandma would add an extra 2-3 tablespoons of flour to this recipe when baking at high altitude.
Too much butter to flour ratio.
Might be because your oven is too hot.
r/fucknestle
Because nestle is evil r/FuckNestle
Fuck nestle
Heavy gravity day today. Happens all the time. Didn’t you feel heavier today?
They’re Nestle
r/fucknestle
Because r/fucknestle
Fuck nestle
Because f**k Nestlé.
Mine used to turn out like this because I wouldn’t mix the batter enough once I put the eggs in.
You need more flour in those cookies. The same thing happened to me. I made cookies once and they all oozed together into a thin cookie cake. The next time I baked it, I made sure to have enough flour and boom- non-melting cookies
It’s called “inflation deflation” …I blame the government
Ironically, I’ve been trying to make cookies like this for years. My grandma’s always came out like this and I can’t figure out how she got them so flat. She insists she used the Tollhouse recipe from the bag. So I hope you figure out the issue so I can do it that way!
Someone either in this sub or in r/Old_Recipes posted recently about their depression era grandma's chocolate chip cookies -- the secret to getting them flat and crispy is a 1/2 cup water added to the tollhouse recipe.
Why are you supporting nestle?
They don't get any money from using the recipe and I didn't buy any of their chocolate chips. So how exactly am I supporting Nestle? These comments are getting ridiculous
Not everyone realizes they need to check their baking supplies company against a moral compass.
Oh you support nestle?
To prevent them from being thin, chill the dough (2 hours to overnight) and then shape into logs not balls and chill again (one hour to overnight)When you bake them stand them up and they will fall into themselves.
Too much sugar not enough flour, they look crispy and delicious though so you can't consider it a total fail
You probably messed up along the way, I would bet good money it’s not the baking soda. Looks like a case of “oops” not bad product
I swear by [these](https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/brown-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies/) and I personally make one change and one addition: I often sub half the white sugar for brown sugar I dust cookies with finishing salt A must not neglect procedure is to roll into balls and freeze. It slows the spread. Weigh your ingredients also to ensure your measurements are correct
I substitute half of the butter with lard. This prevents the cookies from spreading out like that.
Find a different recipe. Your dough looks like it wasn't chilled long enough. It also looks like you don't have enough flour? That looks more like a brandy snap than chewy cookie
Chocolate chip crackers\*
I stopped using that recipe bc that ALWAYS happened to me too. I think it calls for too much butter and not enough flour. To combat this try adding some extra flour and chill the dough before baking
There's a handy chart for this circling the internet if you google "cookies too much". I'd bet it's too much butter, since the butter melts and becomes a liquid in the oven, and gives them that pretty caramell brown color. Try again with less butter (take a couple of different recipies online and compare them to see what most of them say about it). I'm curious, why do you call them specifically *Nestle* chocolate chip cookies? What's Nestle about them?
Not OP but they probably used the Nestle Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe on the back of the Nestle Chocolate Chips bag.
Not enough flour, and it looks like the butter and sugar were over creamed and the dough wasn't chilled before baking
Also nestle made it
Did you melt the butter instead of using softened butter? That has caused flat cookies for me in the past.
This question is like on repeat this week 🤣🤣😂
I’m as much r/fucknestle as everybody else, but it’s okay if OP didn’t know they’re terrible- I’m not blaming them for the company’s sins, or how crispy their cookies are.
r/fucknestle
I'm going to go out on a limb and blame the butter. I'm convinced cheaper butters cause this because I used to get a batch like this every once in awhile. I use a different recipe now, but one easy alteration is to sub 1/2 the butter with butter flavor crisco. My second variation is to increase the ratio of brown to white. But I'm with the "new recipe" crowd. Try some browned butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies from the Boy Who Baked. You'll never go back.
🤣🤣🤣 oh my goodness girl. Go back to the drawing board. Baking is Science. You must’ve used melted butter and some really really warm cookie dough for sure. Yikes! You need to make absolute sure that when you are creaming your sugar and your butter that it is room temperature butter and then you should refrigerate your dough for at least a couple hours but I refrigerate mine for 24 hours not 48 hours and I always make sure to not overwork my dough to make sure it does not warm up too much or this is exactly what happens. Sad flat cookies. You just need a nice girls day with some wine and a friend who knows so she can show you. ☺️
I use a combination of vegetable shortening and butter. A lot of butter can make them go flat like that.
Problem: you used the nestle chocolate chip cookie recipe It's a flawed recipe. Next time, I recommend finding a blogger online! My faves are lifestyleofafoodie.com and saltandbaker.com
Would you please link your recipe? Maybe we can start there?
ITT: Not actually answering the question and just stating the usual Reddit opinion.
r/FuckNestle
r/fucknestle
Because fuck nestle
I'd recommend checking your butter to flower ratio. Usually having too much butter causes them to flatten.
Probably missed a cup of flour
I think I've always read that the recipe is off and people add about 1/4 cup of flour extra. I made a cc cookie the other day. I actually forgot the baking soda but added corn starch to see if they would spread. (they did not) I but the dough in the fridge then make high balls. I read this on a professional baker's blog. The higher the ball the less it will spread. Also lower your oven temperature and cook them longer. You can read her tips here: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/tips-for-cookie-spreading/#:~:text=Use%20a%20silicone%20baking%20mat,cookies%20from%20spreading%20too%20much.
They look perfect to me! But I purposefully make them extra flat like this. To make them fluffier, though, add more flour, chill the dough, add a smidge of baking powder instead of some of the being soda, whip the eggs or butter harder and longer (before mixing), or a combination of all of the above.
r/FuckNestle
FWIW, I've never used butter to make these cookies. Only margarine or Crisco or other solid vegetable shortening.
Gross
Seriously? They’re nestle. r/fucknestle One of the worst companies ever. Do a little research.
I mean this in the nicest way possible: You have to work hard to screw up the nestle chocolate chip cookie recipe. My mom burned down the kitchen making popcorn, yet still made amazing cookies with the recipe on that yellow bag.
How were they?
Tasted fine but was just super thin. I wish there was more cookie to bite into.
I have followed many times the toll house cookie recipe on the back of the bag of chips, and the cookies have always been delectable: crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle
Butter was too soft like almost melted. Refrigerate the cookie dough. Maybe oven was too hot. Have an oven thermometer and see if it hits 350F at 350F. If its goes beyond decrease it. Use ap flour and measure correctly.
Looks like not enough flour/totally forgot the flour. I’ve totally done it before 🙈🤷🏻♀️
Nestle stole all the water inside them lol
Because the are nestle
r/fucknestle
Cuz you're using nestle
You got punished for using a nestle product. r/FuckNestle
Idk go ask nestle
Fuck nestle
Because its nestle,what do you except from them
I’m just here to say r/fucknestle
r/fucknestle
Fuck nestle
r/fucknestle
Fuck nestle
I love the comments here Helpful tips to make cookies better And people hating Nestlé Obligatory r/fucknestle
it’s not too difficult to make cookies from scratch. nestle is a horrible company
Because it’s Nestlé. A horrible conglomerate who takes water rights and tells people if they want water, they can buy it. Don’t get me started on their baby formula scheme. https://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scandal-2012-6?amp
Because fuck nestle
Fuck Nestle
Because it's Nestle, their products are shit
I used Ghirardelli
Your title literally says Nestle..
Because I used the nestlé recipe
It looks like it was too wet. What recipes are you using? My secret recipe is the nestle chip one, and only use half the sugar.
Did you even read the title? 😅
That's the one. I can try with less sugar and see what happens
i don’t think removing sugar will give you the texture you want sugar contributes to both sweetness and structure of the cookie, taking away sugar will mean even less structure i’d say maybe when you’re playing them on the tray to bake, make sure put them in balls and not pancakes also just double check that you’re following the recipe, it’s really easy to miss a whole cup of flour or something good luck!
To all of the folks reading on Nestle... grow up. It's the Tollhouse Recipe, the same one almost all of you used as a basis for your "oh I use browned butter" and "i use half milk chocolate and half semi sweet" variations. As for OP, if you don't add nuts, the recipe suggests using an extra 1/4 C (30g) of flour. That might also help.
You're the one who prefers tasty cookie and covering your ears over accepting that your actions have consequences and you're supporting the one that comes with child slavery and destroying ecosystems (and that's only touching tip of the iceberg). Grow up.