Holiday Sugar Cookie Chemistry

As days get shorter and you fill more of your evenings indoors, you may be looking for familiar ways to warm up. This is where the popular holiday tradition unfolds — you step into your kitchen, preheat your oven, and soon are surrounded with the familiar, sweet smell of fresh baked sugar cookies! It’s comforting and nostalgic, and it brings a whole family together like nothing else. But did you know that baking holiday sugar cookies requires chemistry? It’s true — keep reading to uncover the science behind the common ingredients you’ll likely find in your own coveted family recipe!

Sweeten Things Up

No one wants a bitter cookie or sour cookie, so we use sugar to sweeten our dough. But did you know that sugar isn’t just for taste? The type of sweetener you use has a major impact on the texture of your cookie, too!

For a dense, chewier cookie, brown sugar will be your friend. Brown sugar contains molasses (a syrup) and has a higher moisture content. If you like a crispy cookie, you’ll want to swap out brown sugar and use white sugar instead. With white sugar, you may notice your cookies spread out and pack a crunch.

Get a Rise Out of Your Dough

When baking, you want to have a rising agent to give your dough lift and structure in the oven. This is why most recipes call for baking soda or baking powder. Despite their similar names, mixing them up could spell disaster for your cookies.

Baking soda requires an acidic ingredient to activate, but baking powder provides rise when it is first mixed with wet ingredients and then again as it is heated, making extra puffy baked goods. Some recipes call for both, but if there’s only one, make sure you don’t use them interchangeably or your cookies may fall flat!

Fatten Them Up

Fats are an important part of the recipe, as they add to texture and flavor. There are many fat choices, from butter to oil to shortening.

Room temperature butter is common in baking because it can be creamed with sugar to trap air in your dough for a fluffy cookie and comforting buttery taste. Vegetable oil, on the other hand, is a liquid fat, so not much air gets trapped in the dough during mixing; this can be used for a dense, flat cookie. Vegetable shortening is a semisolid (hydrogenated) form of vegetable oil. This type of fat helps a cookie to hold its shape while still maintaining a soft texture.

Make Them Your Own

Now that you know the science behind some common cookie ingredients, it’s time to bake your own version of the ideal sugar cookie. Once your cookies have cooled, you can really let your creativity shine! With anything from icing to sprinkles and everything edible in between, express yourself with colorful, imagination-stretching cookie designs. What will your family create?

Keep Exploring

To uncover new ways to bring STEM learning to life for your family, we encourage you to keep an eye on our blog!