To CHILL or not to CHILL— that’s my question at least!

Let’s be real for a second- chilling my cookie dough for ANY amount of time after making it is just about the last thing I want to do, next to simply throwing the entire batch in the trash (criminal!) However, after testing three different methods while testing my The Cookie recipe you can find HERE  I was able to see (literally) and taste first hand the differences.

 

Here’s how it worked…

I had 3 different methods I wanted to test to see how it impacts the look, feel and taste of the cookie:

1. Quick Chill: this was a quick chill for about 20-30 minutes in the fridge
2. Overnight Chill: keeping the dough in the fridge overnight
3. Freeze: freezing the dough in balls immediately after making it, they were frozen overnight

Note: I only put the frozen batch of dough into balls so i could easily pop them in the oven and not break my arm trying to scoop it frozen.

What I kept consistent:

1. The temperature at which I baked them: 350 degrees
2. The amount of dough cooked at once: larger cookies were two scoops stacked and smaller was one scoop (stacking method can be found here)
3. The amount of time the cookies baked: 14 minutes

The Results:

 

Quick Chill: the cookies were both visibly soft and almost wet throughout.  The bigger one spread a TON (especially when comparing next to the overnight chill and freeze!!) and tasted cakier than the smaller one.  The smaller one was like biting into cookie dough- which was actually quite delightful!

Overnight Chill: The cookies both looked similar: darker crispier edges with soft chewy center.  The Big one, similar to before tasted like biting into cookie dough but the little one was one of the chewiest cookies I’ve ever tasted… and I mean CHEWY- not just soft- there is a distinct difference.

Freeze: The frozen dough yielded cookies that looked just like the quick chill as far as size but were considerably softer and not as crispy on the edges.  To be fair, the standard rule of thumb when freezing dough is you add an extra 2 min or so onto baking time which probably would have done the trick, but I wanted to keep everything other than chill time consistent.

The Winner: Overnight Chill!!!

We  really LOVED how this method created what seemed to be the perfect cookie: crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle.  Will I really stop and overnight chill my dough every time?? Uhhh… I’m leaning towards a hard NO. But, it was fun to experiment and see how the cookies were impacted.

Experiment for yourself and comment below your results!