Help! My sugar cookies are tough.

[Rose]

I'm using a slight variation of my standard recipe, but why would sugar cookies become tough? I'm doing cut-out cookies with a drop cookie recipe... Is it possible that the drop cookie dough can't be handled as much as the cut-outs? :think

I'm in the middle of making 12 dozen so any tips/reasoning would be greatly appreciated. I can always postpone making more dough until someone replies or I can get a hold of either my mom or my grandma. ;)


Note- I can postpone making more dough for up to a couple of days.

Thank you!

[tigerlily]

How did you melt the butter?

Did you soften it at room temp, over the stove, use the microwave? That would be my guess. Also, are you sure you got the measurement of soda (or baking powder) correct? That can make a huge difference, too.:think

[allisonintx]

It is also entirely possible that the problem is that the drop dough can't handle being 'handled' as much as a rolled dough.

[Stacy]

No help here, but after reading I now want cookies! :lol

[ViolaMum]

I have found that if I roll dough out more than twice, the cookies suffer. That and using too much flour on the counter when rolling.

What's your recipe? My recipe adds an extra egg yolk to the one whole egg and the texture is perfect.

[cornflower]

Tough, butter-based pastry doughs like rolled sugar cookies and pie crusts are caused by "working" the dough too much. If they are worked too long, the butter is too well mixed with the solids, and that's causes problems.

These foods are "light" because the butter does NOT get thoroughly mixed and integrated, which means that when they are cooked, the butter melts (and is absorbed by surrounding solids) leaving pockets of air that make them light and crispy.

[Rose]

:think My butter was started in the microwave (for 7 seconds) and then placed near our heater until it was softer... However, it was still cool enough to need to "cut" into the dough. It specifies that I shouldn't use melted butter, but maybe a moister dough would equal moister cookies? :shrug3

If all else fails, I might just finish with making drop cookies & then use the cut-out recipe for the rest of the batches. :)

(((I'm still sad about how they turned out, I usually can make good baked goods. These look just about perfect in color and size, they just don't have the right texture)))

---------- Post added at 09:28 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:25 AM ----------

My recipe calls for only 1 egg and makes 1 dozen cookies. The only other "liquid" would be the butter which is 1/4 cup.

[ViolaMum]

Yeah, melted butter makes for crisp cookies that tend to spread more. I pull butter out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter for an hour or so. You want to be able to bend the stick, not break it, but not have it so soft that it just makes a gooey mess in your hands.

Two thing I do - run the sugar through the food processor to get the texture of superfine sugar and add an extra egg yolk to the single egg. Those are the two big differences between my drop dough and rolled dough. Oh, and the rolled dough uses 2 1/2 cups of flour to the 2 cups in the sugar cookie dough.

[FaithHopeLove]

I agree that overworking the dough can be a problem.

Alton Brown recommends using powdered sugar for rolling out the dough rather than flour, to prevent making cookies too tough. I'm going to try that this year.