What did I do wrong? (baking question)

[CharlieDog]

I actually prefer them darker. I thought that I creamed the butter and sugar together long enough, it was pretty fluffy and very well mixed together. Maybe not enough air in it though. I'm going to try again in a couple days, creaming it longer, with dark brown sugar instead of light, and chilling it after mixing and in-between batches.

 

[Southpaw]

I had the same issue last weekend. My sister and I made a batch, followed the Toll House recipe except we used M&Ms instead of chocolate chips... and they were really flat (but still delicious!). Then last night my dad made a batch, again following the Toll House recipe, and his turned out much more... normal. lol. I'm not sure what we did differently! I hate how precise baking is.

 

[CharlieDog]

Lol. I know what you mean. They were good cookies, but not normalish ones lol.

 

[Dakotah]

I think you should send me some CD, cause I am in the same state as you and all

 

[Locke]

Also, what type of flour were you using?
If you use a hard flour (bread or all purpose), the cookies will hold their shape better because of the higher protein content and gluten production, but slightly overmixing the batter/dough will give you really nasty tough cookies.
You might want to try a 50/50 mix of cake flour and bread flour as that will give you the lightness but also give some structure to the cookie.
Dark brown sugar will give you very chewy cookies with more spread, meaning they'll be flat. Use fine white sugar to keep the volume, and make your cookies large to keep them soft inside.

Good luck with the next batch!

 

[Gempress]

I don't think it's an issue with the ingredients, recipe, or the way you combined them. It's caused by the dough temperature. Chill the dough thoroughly. You can even leave it in the fridge overnight. You want it nice and cold. Room temp dough = flat, blah cookies.

That seems to be a failing with most chocolate chip cookie recipes I've seen, including the Nestle Toll House recipe. The dough almost always need to be chilled if you want actual cookies and not funky chocolate chip crepes, yet the recipes never seem to mention that step.

And gee, thanks. You now have me craving chocolate chip cookies, LOL.

 

[*blackrose]

You could also try adding in more flour. The chocolate chip recipe we use is amazing (everybody loves these cookies), and mom has tweaked it a bit to add in I think almost a cup more flour (in a double batch) than what the recipe states. We've never had a problem with flat cookies, even without chilling. I also know when a friend and I ran out of flour when we were making cookies and substituted in ground up oats, our cookies were SUPER flat at first, but then when we added in more ground up oats they normalized.

 

[Shai]

*blackrose beat me to it. What did the dough look/feel like? If you don't want flattened cookies one trick is to add a little extra flour til the dough doesn't stick to the bowl at all.

 

[Gempress]

Be careful about adding flour: it makes the cookies tougher.

 

[Greenmagick]

Yeah, I don't usually chill but I often add some extra flour

 

[Locke]

You can add more flour, or use bread flour.