A Quick Fix for Cookies That Spread Too Much in the Oven

Have you ever craved warm homemade cookies and gone looking for a recipe, only to encounter a roadblock in the form of "Chill dough for two hours” or the dreaded “Chill overnight"? If you are anything like me, you mutter, "No way!" and keep looking for a recipe that won't slow you down as much.

The problem is, chilling dough makes a real difference. It results in more flavorful cookies where the sugar has dissolved properly and the dry ingredients have become fully hydrated by the wet ingredients. The texture is more even, the color better distributed, the edges beautifully crisped.

Best of all, the cookies don't spread too much in the oven when the dough is chilled. This is particularly important in recipes with lots of butter, which tend to spread out more and become a thin, brittle disk in the oven—not exactly the chewy, fudgy treat we want. Chilling solidifies the fat and keeps it together longer in the oven.

Use an Ice Bath to Quickly Chill Cookie Dough

Back to that time management question: Who has two hours to wait for cookies? Not us! So here's a quick and clever bypass, suggested by Jesse Szewczyk, pro baker and author of “Cookies: The New Classics.” Put your cookie dough into a large, clean zip-top bag. Squish it down into a flat shape about a half-inch thick and check the seal to make sure no water can get in. Plunge it into an ice bath, either in a bowl or in a larger baking pan if you need more room.

The flat shape maximizes surface area in contact with the ice water, speeding up the chilling process. Within 30 minutes, you should have thoroughly chilled dough—just long enough to finish the kitchen cleanup, make yourself a fresh cup of tea, or take a quick nap.

Scoop the dough right out of the bag to make your cookies. Place onto room-temperature baking sheets (always let the sheets cool between batches, otherwise you'll cause the butter to melt prematurely, and you will undermine all that chilling). Put the bag of dough back into the ice bath or fridge so it stays cold in between batches.

You're about to have the best cookies of your life. You're welcome.