M&M chocolate cookies 2

The Best Way to Cool Cookies (And Why)

Cooling cookies according to instructions is not my ‘forte’. I tend to pull the cookies out of the oven, place them on any spot I can find and continue doing what I was doing. Even if instructions say otherwise, I tend to do it the easy way. And since I don’t like following instructions if I don’t see what their use is, I decided to investigate ‘the best way to cool cookies (and why)’. Is there enough reason for me to change my ways of working?

It’s starts with baking cookies

You can’t cool cookies if you don’t bake them. During baking you transform the soft cookie dough into crunchy, chewy cookies. We’ve discussed what happens in the process in another post on baking cookies. During baking a lot of processes occur, some of which are irreversible, for example the denaturation of proteins or the browning of the cookie.

However, some of them can be reversed. Indeed, the science of food doesn’t stop after it’s been made. For the rest of its storage science will continue to work. For a bread we’ve discovered that the moment it comes out of the oven, the staling process starts. For a lot of products we’ve discussed how packaging extends shelf life. In the case of cooling cookies the most important aspect we have to take into account is moisture.

Moisture science & water activity

Water and movement of water is one of the most commonly returning topics in food. Water is important for shelf life, growth of micro organisms, sensory characteristics, etc. Both a too high or a too low moisture content can be undesirable. So controlling the amount of water and location of the water in foods tends to be very important.

However, water likes to travel and can do so quite easily. This is due to some basic physics which starts with a term that is used to describe the presence of water: water activity. The water activity of a product defines how much ‘available’ water there is. When the value is 1,0 there is 100% available water, when there is no water at all (which is extremely rare, especially in food) the water activity value is 0,0. Most fresh foods are somewhere between 0,9 and 1,0, thus they contain quite a bit of moisture.

Physical laws describe that the water activity of two components close to each other will always even out, as long as the moisture has the ability to move. In other words, if a cookie has very little water inside, but the air has quite a bit, the water will move from the air into the cookie. We have discussed this concept in greater detail when discussing strawberry pies. If a pie has a low moisture crunchy crust but a high moisture filling the crust tends to become soggy (moist) whereas the filling may become a little dry.

When cookies come out of the oven

What happens when cookies come out of the oven? First of all, a lot of the processes happening in the oven will continue happening: the starch & proteins will continue cooking and water will be evaporating. In the meantime the cookie will be cooling down. The thinner the cookie, that faster cooling goes and once the cookie has cooled down enough a lot of these processes won’t be occurring any more. But it’s not only the cookie shape that influences the cooling rate, how the cookie is cooled also helps:

  • Rack: If the cookie is placed on a rack air can travel around the cookie, taking away the heat. This is generally the fastest way. Also, the air can take away any moisture that’s still evaporating from the cookie.
  • Tray: A metal tray (probably the same one the cookies were baked on) still cools quite quickly. Metal transfers heat quickly, but moisture won’t evaporate at the bottom.
  • Wood: Placing the cookies on a wooden tray doesn’t speed things up, the wooden tray will become more likely and wood can often take up moisture (which you don’t want to happen since it might make the bottom of the cookie soggy).
  • Glass: glass doesn’t transfer heat so quickly, so tends to slow down cooling a bit.

So now we know what happens, but what do we actually want to happen?

Cooling cookies on a rack before placing them in an airtight glass jar.

Crunchy cookies requires moisture to escape

If we want crunchy crispy cookies it is essential that as much moisture as possible can escape from the cookie. It’s the low moisture content that makes a cookie crispy. So, during cooling we want as much moisture to leave as possible. What’s more, we want to prevent moisture from being able to come back in too quickly.

In other words, it’s best to cool the cookie on a rack and definitely not in glass or on wood. The wood will get moist and that will result in a moist cookie. Glass also tends to ‘catch’ moisture and hold on to it

Definitely do not pack the cookie before it has cooled down completely. As long as the cookie is warm moisture might evaporate. If the cookie is packed when it’s still warm this moisture will evaporate into the package. This will make the environment in the pack quite humid and that will result in some of that moisture moving back into the cookie, making it soggy instead of crispy.

Cooling chewy cookies

For chewy cookies the cooling process is a little less critical. Since we’re looking for a chewy cookie, we aren’t that bothered by a little more moisture in the cookie. Nevertheless, always prevent packaging too warm cookies since high moisture in a pack is almost never good for your cookie.

Anything else besides moisture?

Even though moisture is probably the most important factor to take into account, there are a few other things to take into account when cooling your cookies:

  • Cookies are soft when they come out of the oven: don’t judge a cookie’s structure by the structure it has when it comes out of the oven. Since the fats are still melted, the starches still warm and the sugars still dissolved, they are still very soft. Only when they cool will they get to their final structure.
  • Sugar dissolves better in water at higher temperatures. This means that at higher temperature (= in the oven) a lot of the sugar dissolves in water. However, at lower temperatures the sugar doesn’t dissolve in the water that well anymore and part of the sugar will recrystallize. This contributes greatly to the crispness of cooled down cookies.

 

Ok, so there’s a proper way to cool cookies. Nevertheless, despite the theories, for a home baker you can bake perfectly fine cookies if you don’t use a special cooling method. Things really start to change though when you scale up. Where will you leave all that heat? How do you prevent the cookies from influencing one another? That’s where the science described above becomes even more important. And as always, experiment in your kitchen and climate and see what works best for you!

What's your challenge?

Struggling with your food product or production process? Not sure where to start and what to do? Or are you struggling to find and maintain the right expertise and knowledge in your food business?

That's where I might be able to help. Fill out a quick form to request a 30 minute discovery call so we can discuss your challenges. By the end, you'll know if, and how I might be able to help.

headshot Annelie

11 Comments

  1. So I made these tonight after drooling over the recipe for two hours & please please pleasing hubs to go get me some real butter and chocolate chips. Followed the directions to a t because I’m a perfectionist but my cookies are super soft after 13 minutes baking, like undercooked soft, still yummy, but not the goal. The edges are BARELY set. Would popping them back in the oven in the morning do the trick or will I just have to try again next time?

    • Hi Kalicia,

      Sorry to hear they didn’t work out yet! But I think you can still fix these. If they at least look like cookies and haven’t turned into complete puddles of butter, you can probably fix them indeed by putting them in the oven again. Just use the same temperature. Pop them in once the oven is pre-heated, leave them in for probably about 3-4 minutes and then check every two minutes to see whether they’re ok. You want to check often because that last baking phase tends to go quite rapidly. The difference between chewy and crispy really can be those two minutes.

      So you might be wondering why they didn’t turn out perfect immediately. Here’s a few reasons why and how to fix them:
      – Different flours can behave quite differently. The difference between European and American flour for instance can be huge. If you find that a recipe turns out way too soft or too dry than you’re used to, just add some extra liquid or flour to compensate.
      – Different ovens: convection vs conventional vs gas ovens can all give different results. A gas oven tends to need a lot longer for cookies to crisp up because of the high moisture content in the oven. If you think your cookie turns brown too quickly, or isn’t crispy enough, always feel free to adjust the baking times by a few minutes with cookies since differences can be bigger than you might want.

      Hope it works out! Good luck 🙂

  2. I’ve worked-out how to bake chocolate-chip cookies in a toaster oven such that (after they’ve warmed-up) the full heat and the residual heat bake them just as I want them if I wait for the oven to cool-down completely (about 20 minutes from 375°F). Presumably because this gives the re-crystalising sugars enough time to form larger crystals, this gives them a crunchy-caramel outside and a chewy interior.

    (Incidentally, I find starting with a cold toaster oven set for just 1 minute great for roasting nuts─it does most of the work as it’s heating-up, then a little more as it cools down. The high temperature it just reaches before it shuts-down varies between 380°F and 420°F depending on the nut. I use a tray from an older, smaller, oven, for better air-flow.)

  3. I knew a lot about cookies. This science, is the money maker.
    Knowing more now, I want to know more.
    Thank you.
    Jimmy

    • Hi Hunter,

      If you leave the cookies on the tray the remaining moisture won’t be able to evaporate as easily. As such, they’ll be softer than if you’d cooled them down on a rack!

      Hope that helps

  4. You yourself write “As long as the cookie is warm moisture might evaporate.” while you are talking about packaging cookies. This is correct. But you also write foolishness about how to make cookies crunchy by telling us to cool them quickly on a rack.

    If you want crunchier cookies you shouldn’t at all cool them quickly on a rack. You should let them keep warm longer (so more evaporation will take place) by cooling them more slowly on the hot sheet they were baked on. More moisture will escape (evaporate) at a higher rate if the cookie is warm. And the longer it stays warm the more moisture escapes.

    I baked 6 mint chocolate chip cookies.
    I let two sit to cool on the parchment papered sheet they were baked on. These almost continued cooking, stayed warm the longest and became the dryest and crunchiest. This suited my particular cookies and taste the worst, as I was after the gooey chewy.

    Two cookies I lifted off the sheet immediately to cool on a metal rack which was sat on a table. They were just slightly off of a room temperature wood ish surface. They cooled rather quick.

    Two cookies I lifted off the sheet immediately to cool on a porcelain plate.

    These latter four cookies came out very similar, maybe with a tiny edge of better chewy gooey to the racked cookies, and a little greasier bottom surface for the cookies that cooled on a plate.

    Next time I might cool a couple in the fridge and a couple on a rack in the freezer.
    Anyway, I wish you fun kitchen experiments and tasty cookies.

    • Hi cookie cooling sceptic,

      Thank you for sharing your experiences! Interesting to hear how your tests turned out differently. Food is very variable and there almost never is just one perfect way to do things. Also, there’s quite a difference in how people like their cookies (e.g. generally speaking, of course, this isn’t true for everyone, people in the US prefer gooey cookies whereas a lot of Europeans prefer crunchier cookies). How you like your cookie can impact your drying process, in an update of this post we will look into that as well :-).

      If you’re after gooey cookies, I would also include another variable in your baking experiment: decrease oven baking time. By decreasing the time in the oven, less moisture escapes and they’ll stay crunchy (and you also point out already). Would be interesting to see if you can get cookies that are even more to your liking that way!

  5. Thanks for the post 🙂
    So I bake around 400 cookies a week, some brownies also and will soon be baking a lot more and I’ve been contemplating these problems every time I bake so I can achieve a consistent product. There are some many variables that it really makes me scratch my head.
    In my experience, leaving them on the tray makes the cookies have a drier/crispier edge, but also a bit of an oily bottom. I always cool them on a wire rack but as I will now bake more, I’ll probably do like larger bakeries and leave things on the tray, it must be easier to handle lots of baked goods like this. Maybe I will have to make some adjustments to my recipes to compensate.
    Happy baking!

    • Hi Gerardo,

      Thanks for coming by! Yes, leaving them on the racks will be easier and less time consuming. You might indeed have to take them out of the oven just a little sooner since they’ll continue baking for a little bit on the hot trays. Interesting you mention the oil coming out. I wouldn’t know exactly just how you’d prevent that, unless you’d add a little bit of an emulsifier to help bind the fat.

      Good luck with your baking endeavors!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.