Make Better Cookies At Home With This Major Ingredient Change

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Baking cookies is a fairly simple task on a fundamental level, but there are so many ways you can subtly improve your treats and bring your cookies up to bakery chef levels. To learn more about baking cookies, Tasting Table spoke to Jerrelle Guy, author of “Black Girl Baking,” a James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, and the creator of The Dinner Ritual, a newsletter exploring the intersection of cooking and spirituality. She suggested adding more vanilla extract to cookies to enhance their flavor.

“Vanilla subtly enhances and rounds out the flavor of cookies,” Guy says. “While it may not be the dominant note of the cookie’s profile, like salt, it just makes everything taste better, and you can always taste when it’s been left out.” In addition, vanilla adds a pleasant aroma to cookies, which is quite important when it comes to taste.

Because of this, Guy likes to use more vanilla than the recipe calls for. “Usually if you double the amount of vanilla it will make the vanilla note more pronounced and aromatic and even give the cookies a more artisan bakery taste,” she reasons. Since vanilla is a flavor enhancer, a bit more vanilla won’t typically overpower the taste of a cookie; instead, it brings out whatever other flavors are in the cookie (such as chocolate in chocolate chip cookies).

Guy has a few extra tips when it comes to adding vanilla to your cookie recipes. For one, she recommends only doing this when you have pure vanilla extract rather than imitation. This will help avoid giving the cookies an artificial taste. You can even make your own homemade vanilla extract to truly give your cookies that from-scratch vibe. She also notes that overusing vanilla can make the dough a bit bitter, so don’t try to add even more vanilla than her initial recommendation. The last thing you want is a bitter cookie when you were aiming for a sweet vanilla flavor.

Luckily, though, adding extra vanilla extract doesn’t create textural problems within your cookies. “From a structural standpoint,” she says, “you don’t really have to worry about your vanilla alterations affecting the final texture because it’s usually such a small amount.” For instance, this recipe for brown butter chocolate chip cookies only calls for 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract compared to 1⅔ cup of flour. Doubling the vanilla extract to just 2 tablespoons won’t be enough to weigh down the dough or inhibit the cookie’s formation in any way.