What happens to cookies baked from dough that has not been cooled?
Background
Recently, I came across a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that called for refrigerating the dough before baking it, which I hadn’t done before. I made the recipe, refrigerated the dough overnight, and baked the cookies the next day, and they turned out great. So here I am, trying again in order to compare the results from cooled and non-cooled dough.
Based on some research, the cookies from non-chilled dough should be more spread out, softer, and have less concentrated flavour. The difference can be seen with only a half hour of refrigeration. In the refrigerated dough, the fat cools and remains more solid for longer, preventing spread. The lack of liquification also discourages flavour diluteness.
Procedure
I mixed the ingredients together. While the recipe says two tablespoons of milk are needed, I put in closer to four tablespoons of water in order to get everything to stick together. A word of caution: while it may be tempting to measure chocolate chips with your heart, they don’t mix very well into the dough, rolling around the bottom of the mixing bowl. Adding more chocolate chips than what is said to add means more chocolate chips that have to be individually placed on the cookies.
I split the dough in two. For one half of the dough, I made ten cookies and baked them right away. The other half, I put in the refrigerator. After cooling for an hour, I made ten cookies and baked them. The only manipulated variable is the cooling of the dough, baking both batches of cookies for the same amount of time and on the same cookie sheet.
Observations
Visually, there’s not much of a difference between the two batches of cookies. The non-chilled cookies don’t look as spread out as I thought they would. The chilled cookies seem larger than the non-chilled cookies, but that may be because of different dough portioning.
Taste-wise, I don’t notice a difference between the cooled and non-cooled cookies. The concentration of flavour seems to be identical.
The chilled cookies are a little bit softer than the non-chilled cookies. However, the difference is slight.
Conclusion
One hour of chilling cookie dough does not have much of an effect on the outcome of the cookies.
The flavour of the cookies baked today does seem to be not as concentrated as the ones I baked for the first time about a month ago, when I chilled the dough overnight. However, there were more chocolate chips added the first time I baked them, which may have changed the concentration of the flavour.
Further tests are necessary to determine a more definitive relationship. Different lengths of time for cooling could be measured. Another test could be done to determine the relationship between the temperature of cooling, putting dough in the refrigerator and in the freezer.
Sources of Error
I was not super strict with all of the measurements. The cookies were portioned off using two teaspoons, not a scoop, which lead to different sizes of cookies. The number of chocolate chips per cookie was also not thoroughly controlled, which could have affected results. The time of baking was determined by a clock showing hours and minutes, not a timer or a stopwatch going to smaller units of time. Also, I cooled the dough for only an hour, not the two-hour minimum recommended in the recipe, which could be a significant factor in the result of the cookies.
Happy baking!
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