Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What happens if you only use brown sugar in cookies? ›

Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more. With less moisture escaping via steam, they also stay moist and chewy.

Using all light brown sugar will yield cookies with a lighter flavor (that's not a bad thing!). They'll be buttery with accents of vanilla and a soft interior, but a lighter molasses flavor. Opting for all dark brown sugar will give you a richer flavor and ever-so-slightly softer centers.

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

Cornstarch gives the cookies that ultra soft consistency we all love. Plus, it helps keep the cookies beautifully thick. We use the same trick when making shortbread cookies. Egg yolk: Another way to promise a super chewy chocolate chip cookie is to use an extra egg yolk.

When we use only brown sugar in a cookie recipe, the resulting cookies will be chewier, since they contain more moisture from the molasses. Also, we'll have a puffier and softer cookies, because molasses is acidic and reacts with baking soda to make them puff up in the oven more.

Brown sugar adds a dense chewiness to certain types of baked goods like cookies. When brown sugar is replaced with white sugar, you may end up with a slightly crispier result. Still, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. White sugar can be used to replace brown sugar, producing only slight changes in texture and flavor.

The only food where variety more or less matters is cookies: Since dark brown sugar has a higher acidity than light, it can cause the baking soda in your recipe to react, which may force your cookies to rise more during their designated baking time. However, the overall differences are moderate at most.

Using dark brown sugar, my cookies spread less in the oven and were denser, heavier, and quite moist. Using light brown sugar, my cookies spread a far bit more, were more airy, and had lighter flavors. Overall, I wouldn't say that the type of brown sugar significantly changed the outcome of the recipe.

While light and dark brown sugar are interchangeable, they're not exact substitutes. Using dark brown sugar when a recipe calls for light will give your final product a more robust taste and a darker color, and it might slightly affect the texture.

Using the wrong leavening agent

If you accidentally add baking soda instead of baking powder to baked goods, they won't rise because there is not enough acid.

What happens if you don't put enough baking soda in cookies? ›

baking soda allows the ingredients to rise and become airy. Without baking soda, your cookies will be very dense, perhaps not chewy, and not as tasty. You get flat cookies like a puddle. Unless you made a meringue type cookie then it uses cream of tartar, and whipped egg whites.

Light corn syrup is another ingredient that you can add to cookie dough that will help it stay softer longer. The corn syrup you buy at the grocery store is not the high-fructose corn syrup that soft drinks are made with; it's a sugar that is liquid at room temperature and helps other sugars say liquid at high heat.

Cookies With Just Egg Yolks

I'd had such high hopes, too, as the lecithin-rich yolks worked as an emulsifier, helping the butter and sugar whip up especially light and fluffy, without any hint of curdling.

Flavor flat-out: Cookies won't be sweet, obviously! Sugar adds sweetness and balances other flavors. Texture troubles: They might be drier and crumblier, as sugar helps hold moisture and creates a chewier texture. Browning bummer: Expect a paler color, as sugar helps with browning during baking.

Brown sugar is the simplest substitute for granulated sugar. You can use light or dark brown sugar as a 1:1 substitute. It makes for darker, denser baked goods with a more caramel or molasses flavor, which is wonderful for classic chocolate chip cookies, but less desirable for delicate cakes.

More molasses, however, means dark brown sugar has slightly higher levels of acidity and moisture which might cause a batch of cookies to rise a bit higher and taste more caramel-y than those made with light brown sugar.

The most common white sugar for cookie baking is regular sugar, which is classified by the food industry as “fine” or “extra fine.” Superfine sugar (or ultrafine sugar), the finest of all granulated white sugar textures, is called for occasionally in recipes because it dissolves easily.