Use Muffin Tins To Bake Tastier, Fancier Cookies

Cookies are a gift, period. But if you want to make your homemade cookies look a bit more professional, all you need is a muffin tin.

Photo by Lisa Fotios.

Over at Epicurious, baker Dorie Greenspan explains how she discovered a technique to bake more even, professional-looking cookies in her bakery. She used metal rings to mould them, giving them straight edges — but they also tasted better. Greenspan told Epicurious:

Left to their own devices, cookies will spread, but here they had to grow in their tiny little homes, and became crisper around the edges, which I loved.

If you want to try this at home, you can bake rounds of dough in the bottom of muffin tins, Greenspan suggests. Epicurious explains how it’s done.

The technique couldn’t be simpler — just scoop cookie dough with a standard two-tablespoon cookie scoop, or use a spoon. “Most cookies have enough butter so you don’t have to butter the muffin pan,” Greenspan says. “Then use a little jar with plastic wrap to press down the surface.”…The heat of the oven will do the rest. Bake your cookies as directed in the recipe, checking them a couple of minutes earlier than usual.

Basically, you flatten the cookie, then add to the tin. You could even use a mini muffin tin for smaller cookies. For full details, head to the post to see how it’s done.

The Christmas Baking Trick That Makes Any Cookie Fancy [Epicurious]

This article has been updated since its original publication.