You could use aluminum foil instead of parchment paper for your cookie baking, although we would recommend you grease the foil first to prevent any of your cookies getting stuck to it. The best solution in this instance is to simply grease the baking tray to prevent the cookies from sticking.
1. Foil does not have any nonstick properties. Baking cookies on foil is pretty much exactly the same as baking directly on a baking sheet. The only difference is that it can save you some clean-up time – you can simply remove and discard your foil without having to wash your baking sheet.
5 Substitutes for Parchment Paper
- Silpat: Best for Lining Baking Sheets.
- Wax Paper: Best for Room Temperature Storage and Makeshift Work Surfaces.
- Greased Baking Sheet: Good for Baking.
- Aluminum Foil with Oil: Good for Baking, Especially at Hotter Temperatures.
- Nonstick Sheet Pans: Good for Baking.
Don’t bake cookies on it.
Lining your cookie sheet with aluminum foil can cause the bottom of your cookies to cook faster, ultimately resulting in uneven bake. Instead, use parchment paper, a silicone baking mat, or a really good nonstick spray.
What happens if you use foil instead of baking paper?
It can be great for lining the dishes and pans you are cooking with so that cleanup is easier. However, unlike parchment paper and wax paper, foil doesn’t have anything that makes it nonstick. This means that you could end up with bits of foil stuck to your food when all is said and done.
Yes, you can. Aluminum foil produces crisp cookies with moist insides. It bakes cookies faster and has an easier cleanup process. Keep in mind that aluminum foil will make the cookies darker and crispier than other methods.
Can I bake on aluminum foil?
Aluminum foil is safe to put in the oven, making it great for lining baking sheets. But it’s not recommended to use foil to line the bottom of the oven to catch spills and drips because it can melt in high heat and damage the oven. The best foil uses include: Cooking food on the grill.
As a general rule, you can bake cookies without a cookie sheet by using any tray, dish, or bakeware that could be used in the oven. You can use a regular cake pan, glass pan, pizza tray, or disposable aluminum foil tray. Make sure to adjust the cookie baking time according to each type of bakeware.
What do I use if I don’t have baking paper?
Silicone baking pads, often referred to by the brand name Silpat, are a great replacement for parchment paper. Just drop one onto your baking sheet, and whatever you cook or bake on it will come right off. There’s no need to grease your pan, and there’s very little to clean up afterward.
Spread a thin, even layer of butter either directly on your baking sheet or on your aluminum foil. You can use salted or unsalted butter, just be sure not to put too much. Just an even application of butter on your baking surface is enough to keep your cookies from sticking to the pan.
Can I use silver foil instead of baking paper?
This is somewhere between misleading and simply wrong. Parchment paper reduces sticking, and browning on the bottom (as Jay said). Greasing the foil makes up for the first, but aluminum foil will not reduce browning, meaning you can’t use the same cooking time. Same goes for putting them straight on the pan.
Is it better to bake on aluminum foil or parchment paper?
One of the biggest benefits of using foil is that it can handle higher temperatures than parchment or silicone baking mats, so it can be put under the broiler or onto the grill.
If you do not have a cookie sheet, you can bake cookies with an aluminum baking pan, silicone pan, cast iron skillet, muffin pan, porcelain baking pan, glass baking dish, and a pizza stone. You will learn how to use other types of cookware and even if aluminum foil can be used for baking cookies.
Follow our simple tips and techniques and you’ll turn out perfect cookies every time.
- Bake Better Cookies.
- Soften Your Butter.
- Creaming Butter.
- Measure Your Flour Correctly.
- Line Your Pans With Parchment Paper.
- Add Eggs One at a Time.
- Add Flour or Dry Ingredients in Batches.
- Fold in Chocolate Chips by Hand.
Rest the Dough A secret baker’s trick is to rest your cookie dough in the fridge. You can rest it for at least an hour, which will evaporate some of the water and increase the sugar content, helping to keep your cookies chewy. The longer you allow your dough to rest in the fridge, the chewier your cookies will be.
2. Prevent Excess Spreading
- Chill your cookie dough. See tip #1 above.
- Use a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
- Never place cookie dough balls onto a hot baking sheet.
- Butter may have been too warm.
- Under-measuring the flour.
- Don’t over-mix the cookie dough.
Why Do Cookies Get Hard? Like all baked treats, cookies are subject to getting stale. Over time, the moisture in the cookies evaporates, leaving them stiff and crumbly. It’s the same thing that happens to breads, muffins, and other baked goods.
Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you’re more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.
Ingredients to Keep Cookies Soft
Butter is more than 15% water, so it plays a role in making cookies soft by adding water and fat, which contributes flavor and tenderness. Melting the butter you’re using can make the cookie softer.
The most common cause is using a different flour than usual, such as cake flour, and measuring flour with too heavy a hand. Using larger eggs than called for can make cookies cakey, as will the addition of milk or more milk or other liquids than specified.
While brown sugar keeps your cookies moist and soft, white sugar and corn syrup will help your cookies spread and crisp in the oven. Using more white sugar in your cookies will result in a crispier end product. To achieve a crispy cookie, skip the rest in the fridge.
Using melted butter in cookies helps you achieve a similar fudgy-yet-cooked texture and prevents any unwanted cakiness. Instead of the rise coming from both chemical and physical leavening agents (baking soda/powder + creamed butter), it now comes almost exclusively from chemical agents alone.
Cookie temperatures fluctuate, with some recipes as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and a few as high as 425 degrees Fahrenheit, but most recipes land on 375 or 350 to evenly bake the entirety of the cookie.
Pastry Flour: An unbleached flour made from soft wheat, with protein levels somewhere between cake flour and all-purpose flour (8 to 9 percent). Pastry flour strikes the ideal balance between flakiness and tenderness, making it perfect for pies, tarts and many cookies.
Microwaving them. If you cover your cookies with a wet paper towel and nuke them for a few seconds, they should soften up enough to eat. The problem is they will get really hot and melty.
Reheat them in the microwave on medium setting for 15 to 20 seconds. This should be enough time for the cookies to soak in the moisture from the paper towel. If you take them out and they haven’t softened enough yet, wrap them in another damp paper towel and microwave again for 10 more seconds.
A simple fix. You see, the only thing that you need to soften up a batch of day-old cookies is a slice of bread. This is a trick I learned from my mom after she saw me turn up my nose one too many times at a slightly crispy chocolate chipper (self-proclaimed gooey, chewy cookie monster here!).
Water vapor escaping from the dough in combination with the carbon dioxide released by our baking soda is ultimately what makes our cookies light and airy.
“Which means a better likelihood of a soft, chewy cookie in the center.” So chilling the dough before baking means fluffier cookies with better consistency. Plus, if you have a bowl of dough ready in the refrigerator, it’s much easier to scoop while chilled than at room temperature.
Most of the time, cookies need to cool for around five to ten minutes before they can be moved and consumed. But it’s not as much of a cut and dry answer as you may think.
For softer, chewier cookies, you will want to add much less granulated sugar, slightly more brown sugar, and a fair bit less butter. For cakey cookies, you will often be including even less butter and sugar.
If your cookies are rock hard, the site explains that it’s likely due to an over-abundance of sugar, which hardens, darkens, and flattens the cookies as they bake. Bake or Break adds that over-mixing your dough can be the culprit, too. When flour is blended with other ingredients, gluten starts to form.
The most common reason why your cookies don’t spread is that you’ve added too much flour. Adding more dry ingredients than the recipe calls for can result in a dough that is too stiff. Moisture and fat in the dough are soaked up by the excessive amount of flour which takes away its ability to spread.
Most cookies have top crusts that remain relatively soft and flexible as the cookies set during baking. However, if the top surface dries out before the cookie is finished spreading and rising, it hardens, cracks, and pulls apart, producing an attractive crinkly, cracked exterior.
Yolks, where all of the fat is in an egg, increase richness, tenderness and flavor. Therefore, if you put an extra egg, you will get a chewier cookie. I do it all the time. If you put less, you will get a more crumbly cookie.
What are the primary causes of this? The steam and other hot gasses that were puffing the cookies up either escapes or condenses. Without heat to create more steam, the cookies deflate. You get exactly the same effect with bread, quiches, and other baked goods.
(Exactly) How to Make Fluffy Cookies: 11 Genius Tips for Puffy…
- Make Sure Your Baking Soda and Baking Powder aren’t Expired.
- Use Baking Powder instead of Baking Soda.
- Roll Your Dough Balls into Cylinders.
- Chill the Dough.
- Use a Silicone Mat, not a Greased Baking Sheet.
- Add another Egg Yolk.
Mistake: When cookies turn out flat, the bad guy is often butter that is too soft or even melted. This makes cookies spread. The other culprit is too little flour—don’t hold back and make sure you master measuring. Finally, cookies will also flatten if placed and baked on hot cookie sheets.
Once it’s clear that you do have limp cookies or less-than-crispy crackers, put them back into a preheated 300° F or 325° F oven, regardless of the original (presumably higher) baking temperature.
This relates to the issue of creaming, because cold butter is more difficult to cream. Thus, if your butter is too cold, your cookies will be denser, and they will likely not spread enough in the pan when you bake them. In general, you want your butter to be cool, but not cold.
Vinegar is a surprisingly common ingredient in baked goods, considering that it has such a sharp flavor. But as an acid, vinegar is often included in cake and cookie batters to react with baking soda and start the chemical reaction needed to produce carbon dioxide and give those batters a lift as they bake.
Cold eggs won’t make your batch of cookies taste or look horrible, but taking a little extra time to bring them to room temperature will get you fluffier cookies. If you have some time to kill before baking, simply let the eggs sit on the counter for no more than two hours.