Your cookies are missing a key ingredient – it may sound strange but it’s scientifically proven
FEW things are more frustrating than working hard on a batch of cookies, only to open the oven and find them collapsed, flat and crumbly.
As it turns out, one teaspoon of a surprising ingredient usually reserved for savory fare can fix all your cookie problems.
To keep cookies fluffy, stop them from spreading, and improve their volume, add one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to the mix.
The acidic ingredient has branched out in recent years, finding its way from salad dressings and seared salmon into cocktails, smoothies, and even shampoo.
Many recipes focus on the purported health benefits of apple cider vinegar, but you don't need to be baking "healthy" cookies to add it to your batter.
Lillian Stone at The Takeout classic cookie recipes to find the best one, mixing and matching ingredients and baking methods.
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After baking over 400 cookies across the batches, she determined that apple cider vinegar is essential to the perfect "lift" in the batter.
As Stone explained, a combination of baking soda and vinegar is a common egg substitute in vegan baking, since the chemical reaction aerates the batter.
When the ingredients combine, and the carbon dioxide foams up, it adds bubbles of air to the mixture.
The best strategy, Stone explained, is to mix the batter, then let it stand so the carbon dioxide bubbles can form.
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Along with creating lift in the cookies, the vinegar also helps keep the cookies from spreading.
"Less spread means slightly springier, more voluminous cookies," she writes.
That's because the vinegar also reacts with the egg, setting the proteins in place more quickly and leaving less time for spread.
You can implement the hack into any recipe when you bake, but it's especially effective for cakes and cookies.
As for the bitter taste of apple cider vinegar, Stone said she couldn't taste the sour stuff in any of her mass-baked batches of cookies.
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"You probably wouldn't eat a spoonful of baking soda, either," she pointed out.
Once you implement apple cider vinegar into your cookie recipes, your only problem will be is never having enough cookies.
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