Cookies Too Hard

Without knowing your recipe, my best suggestion is to rolling them thicker and bake them for less time. But it could very well be something in the formulation of your recipe. If you could share your recipe here, I might be able to give you more informed guidance.

I agree with Julia, without knowing the ingredientes and ratio in your recipe is very hard to try to give you any advice..

Another thing that can make cookies hard is over-handling them--too much mixing after adding the dry ingredients, too many roll-outs, etc. Once you have creamed the sugar and butter, try stirring in the dry ingredients gently only until the dough has come together. Then wrap, refrigerate a few hours and roll them out-- fitting as many shapes on the first roll as possible. And then do only one more roll out, if necessary.

As the others said, though, some recipes are less forgiving than others...

Thanks evetybody! Here's my recipe:

2 cups sugar

1 cup unsalted butter

1 egg, plus 2 egg yolks

4 cups flour 

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

The directions are the same as everyone else's.

Correction: 1/2 cup butter.

That seems like the inverse of sugar-to-butter than most cookie recipes I've seen and used. Usually, the basic rule of thumb for cookies is a ratio of 3 flour : 2 butter : 1 sugar by weight (give or take depending upon other ingredients, etc.) Would you consider trying your recipe, except using 1 cup of sugar and 2 sticks (1 cup) of butter with the rest the same? I think you may see a big difference in texture.

[If you notice, your recipe's ratios are somewhat different than the basic 3:2:1--even with the change--because you have an egg and egg yolks in it, which provide extra fat and liquid. That's why you can afford to use more flour than the basic ratio and essentially less butter/fat.]

Thank you so much for you help. That makes good sense and I can't wait to try it out!

 Becky

Sorry I'm so late to the party here but I'm just seeing your post. When I first started making cookies I read how everyone was omitting the baking powder so they wouldn't spread. I did that and they tasted too dense to me. I found a recipe that called for powdered sugar instead of regular sugar, but I found that too soft (gee, this is starting to sound like the 3 bears). So, I decided to use my same recipe and for the sugar I used half regular granulated sugar and half powdered sugar and I love it. I do use 1/4 tsp of the baking powder also. I always find it so interesting that people can use the same recipe and get varying results. So many factors.