We’ve all been there: every ingredient perfectly measured according to a recipe that appears to be from a trusted source. As the oven preheats, you pull your hair back and tightly secure your apron–confident that you’re finally ready to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookies. After baking them, you take them out of the oven, thinking you’ve finally mastered the routine… but alas, life is not so perfect after all, and the cookies are as hard as rocks with mysterious flavors overwhelming your taste buds.

The internet is flooded with recipes claiming to be the “best chocolate chip cookies” or “grandma’s secret recipe,” but after trying five different versions and still not getting it right, you start to wonder maybe the problem isn’t the recipe.

How is it that something so simple–a mixture of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs–can be so difficult to perfect? Chocolate chip cookies are supposed to be nostalgic, warm, and delicious… instead of overly complicated science experiments.

To get to the bottom of this, Mr. Clark, AHS’s culinary teacher was interviewed, and he’s encountered more cookie disasters than most.

“The most frequent issue I see is not measuring a product correctly—too much butter, too much flour, switching baking soda for baking powder. Those are kind of the big ones,” he said.

According to Clark, baking cookies is simply following instructions.

“The method I swear by, and I know this is irritating for students to hear, is physically reading and then annotating your recipes. I make my culinary students do it every class. Underlining the products they need, underlining the cooking temperature,” he said.”

The precision is what makes the cookies turn out successful. When you measure ingredients carefully and follow each step exactly, the results are way better. That kind of accuracy is a lot like chemistry, where even small changes can mess things up. By analyzing the recipe first, there’s a higher chance of getting positive results. Knowing the purpose of each ingredient also makes a vast difference.

“Making sure if it’s baking soda or baking powder, they are physically squaring it off so they know which one

they’re actually using. That level of attention to the recipe generally produces a much higher quality product,” Clark said.

After speaking with Mr. Clark, I came to the conclusion that, beyond the recipe itself, understanding the purpose of each ingredient is crucial to baking the perfect cookie. Because of this, I conducted some research on each ingredient to see how it makes a difference in the recipe.

Flour: flour adds fluff to the cookies. Adding too much leads to them becoming crispy, greasy, and flat. Most recipes assume you’ll use all-purpose flour, but it can increase the chance of spreading and a less chewy texture.

Baking soda: Baking soda helps the cookies bake upward and outward. Adding too little can lead to flat cookies, but adding too much can lead to a bitter taste.

Salt: Salt enhances the flavors of the cookie. Too little turns the cookies overly sweet, while too much leads to an unpleasant flavor.

Butter: Butter acts as a stabilizer, making the cookies soft and tender. If you use too much, you might end up with greasy and flat cookies, similar to flour. On the other hand, too little butter can lead to tough and crumbly cookies. It’s best to use unsalted butter to manage the salt levels.

Sugar: Sugar makes the cookies sweet and gives them a nice golden brown color. If you use too little sugar, it can change how the cookies taste and feel. Using too much sugar, however, can make them hard and crumbly. It’s important to take your time when mixing the sugar and butter at the start. Many bakers don’t realize how time consuming mixing these two ingredients actually is, since recipes usually don’t mention it, but it truly impacts the final product.

Brown sugar: Brown sugar not only gives cookies a lovely color but also adds a richer flavor. It makes cookies chewier, softer, and thicker compared to using white sugar.

Eggs: Eggs help hold everything together and create cookies that are moist and chewy. Adding too many eggs can lead to cookies that have a gummy texture and resemble cake more. Make sure to beat each egg one at a time and mix well.

Chocolate Chips: Chocolate chips are the highlight of this recipe. Using too many can cause the cookies to be thin and overbaked. Using too few is just disappointing. There are also different types of chips that can add variety: butterscotch, salted caramel, white chocolate, and milk chocolate.

Ultimately, learning to bake cookies isn’t about finding the ‘best’ recipe and just praying you will get good results. It’s about being patient and being precise when measuring out the ingredients. By learning the purpose of each ingredient, it is much easier to predict how your cookies will turn out, and they will most likely turn out to be “perfect.”