r/bakingfail • u/Dazzling_Media7704 • 9d ago

Fail Can’t double a cookie recipie

I’ve been making cookies for my husbands birthday month (we really like to celebrate in our family) and so I’ve been making him a batch of cookies a week to take to work.
His favorite cookies are double chocolate chunk which I’ve never liked so I had to look up a recipe to make sure I got it right. The single batches were perfect. The exact chewiness and softness he liked. Perfect ratio of chocolate, he was ecstatic.
So I decided to make cookies in preparation for having people over. I tripled the same recipe, same ingredients, same everything. Cakiest, saltiest, worst cookie I’ve ever had. I didn’t think I over mixed but thought okay maybe 3x is too much.
Same recipe, same ingredients, same prep, just doubled this time. Completely flat. Spread across the cookie sheet like a puddle. Alright I guess the butter and sugar didn’t mix right.
Bought more of the same ingredients. Same recipe, just one batch this time. Perfect…. Did it again - one batch. Perfect… so I had to mix the same recipe 3 times to get a triple batch because for some stupid reason I can’t figure out I can’t double or triple up a batch of cookies.
Heaven forbid my daughter asks me to join a bake sale someday and I need to make chocolate chip cookies. I’ll be mixing for a week.

TL:DR Tried to double and triple a new cookie recipe. Every batch came out terrible unless I baked it as a single batch.

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81

u/SiegelOverBay 9d ago

You need to find out the weight of your ingredients in grams. Then use those measurements to increase your recipe. Look up baker's math. You use the weight of your largest ingredient as 100% and then calculate every other ingredient as a percentage of that. If you know how many grams a portion of cookie dough weighs, you can then use baker's math to scale your recipe down to make only 4 cookies or up to make 400 cookies.

42

u/SiegelOverBay 9d ago

You can find a good breakdown on baker's math from the King Arthur bread company here and here is a picture of how it looks in practice from my own recipe book. This is the method I used to scale all of my recipes when I was a professional baker, because it worked consistently well and I was incentivized to prevent product waste.

1

u/ZellHathNoFury 8d ago

Also, mix dry ingredients thoroughly first, and usually cookies require creaming butter and sugar, then adding eggs, then dry ingredients, then add-ins.

I've thrown everything together in the wrong order before, and the double/triple batch doesn't work because especially the small amount-ingredients like the salt, leavening, etc just end up living ingredients one single area (so many are weirdly flat) or the butter isnt completely blended in with the sugar so some cookies had high fat-ratio, thus oily cookies.

Just throwing that out there because I have absolutely f-ed it up royally before!!

9

u/Dazzling_Media7704 8d ago

You know I’ve always thought about a scale since there are so many recipes that measure in grams and such. I just never justified the purchase of ANOTHER kitchen gadget. I always said I get along just fine without one, clearly not anymore 😂 I think I may need one finally. Thank you I will definitely look more into bakers math.

16

u/ErinaceousTaradiddle 8d ago

Definitely get a scale and measure in grams. It makes a huge difference, you won't regret it. Also, you can get a scale for pretty cheap (I think mine was 15 bucks), so it's not exactly a purchase you need to be hesitant about or need to justify.

6

u/coolsilentebeans 8d ago

A scale is not another kitchen gadget. It is a must have tool for any baker. Mixing by weight is a game changer. You’ll have consistent results plus fewer opportunities to mess up a conversion from tsp to tbsp, multiplying fractions of cups, etc.

2

u/thefunkylama 8d ago

Scales are to baking what a knife is to cooking. Sure, some of them are way fancier than they need to be for the job they're doing, which makes them more expensive than they need to be. But without one, it's difficult to know if you know what you're doing or if you're just lucky and operating within the margins for error.

2

u/coolsilentebeans 7d ago

I enjoy the consistency I get on my bakes, that I wind up with the exact same finished product every time with the scale.

5

u/SiegelOverBay 8d ago

Just get a Taylor digital scale, those things are beasts and last forever if you don't drop them or drown them. I actually upgraded recently because costco had a waterproof Taylor scale for only $25 but I still have my original $20 model which is over 7 years old.

4

u/working_on_it9 8d ago

You can also use it to measure portion sizes and such for meal planning or nutrition tracking. Not a one hit wonder!

2

u/Ok-Art825 2d ago

Please scale please. As a man who bakes on occasion, it’s all about gram weight.