Things bakers know: The #1 rule of cookie storage
Make sure all your cookie baking doesn’t go to waste.
Have you ever bitten into a gingerbread cookie or what should be a crisp sugar cookie only to find it has gone soggy?
Now that it’s cookie season, we need to talk about the #1 rule of cookie storage: Never store your crispy cookies and chewy cookies together.
Why? It’s like a form of osmosis: The crisp cookies will absorb the moisture in the chewy cookies, softening their texture and losing their snap. The chewy cookies, meanwhile, will dry out, diminishing their characteristic softness. Avoid this by keeping similarly textured cookies together: crispy gingersnaps and crunchy shortbread in one container, and fudgy chocolate chip cookies and chewy sugar cookies in another, etc. (On the same note, you should also keep strongly flavored cookies separate so that their flavors don’t bleed into one another: You don’t want your gingerbread cookies tasting like peppermint slice-and-bakes!)
That means that if you're shipping cookies of different textures and/or flavors and using one container, first tuck them into cellophane bags to keep them separated and in top shape.
About that container: An old-fashioned cookie jar is nostalgic, but not the best vessel for keeping cookies optimally fresh. Instead, opt for an airtight vessel like this Prokeeper+ Cookie Storage Container, which has a sturdy silicone seal to lock in freshness. And if you’re using it to store soft cookies, it comes with a terra cotta insert, which adds moisture to help cookies keep their chewy texture for longer. (Just like a brown sugar saver!)
An additional tip to keep soft cookies soft
One more tip to keep softer cookies from losing their chew? Consider adding a slice of white bread to the cookies’ storage container. Similar to the terra cotta stone that comes with our cookie storage container, the bread slice provides moisture that creates a humid environment in the container; that excess moisture is then absorbed by the cookies to keep them from drying out and becoming hard.
Ready to bake? We’ve got 46 classic holiday and Christmas cookies to bake this year.
Cover photo (Earl Grey Cookies) by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Yekaterina Boytsova.
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