Recipe of homemade cookies

If there is a sweet that almost everyone likes, it is cookies. In addition, making cookies at home is another small pleasure, which we can also share with the little ones in the house. It is enough to have a good cookie recipe at hand to enjoy them in no time.

When it comes to having sweets for snacks, breakfast or enjoying a simple snack, cookies are a good solution. The wide variety of options that we can prepare is almost as big as our imagination. And if by any chance you have a flavor in mind that the manufacturers do not cover, you can always prepare some delicious homemade cookies adjusted to your preferences.

When it comes to making easy cookies, nothing better than having a cookie recipe suitable for our needs at hand. And it is that, although all cookies look the same, the truth is that the ingredients that are part of a cookie dough can have some variations, which logically influence its flavor and final appearance. 

The proof is that the recipe for chocolate cookies differs from the recipe for cookies or the one we would use to make biscuits. Therefore, we are going to choose to give you a general recipe, which you can later modify to your liking to obtain the results you prefer.

Ingredients

The first thing we have to know when making cookies is what ingredients we need. So let’s get to know our recipe for homemade cookies. With this mixture we obtain around 1 kilo of cookies, although if you want more or less quantity, you only have to adjust the quantities to what you need:

– 2 eggs

– 250 grams of butter or margarine

– 600 grams of flour of four zeros or special for the elaboration of masses or biscuits

– 400 grams of sugar

– a tablespoon of baking powder

– a pinch of salt

– a spoon of vanilla essence

– a little lemon zest

This is the basis of a good part of the cookie recipes that we find on the net. The proof is that if you want to know how to make shortbread cookies you can use this same recipe, increasing the amount of this ingredient to 425 grams and omitting the lemon. On the other hand, to these ingredients we can add those that we want, depending on the flavor that we want to give to the final product. 

For this reason, the last two ingredients that we have mentioned can be changed or not used if they do not fit the final flavor that we want. This is what happens, for example, with chocolate cookies, in which we can do without the lemon and add a touch of cocoa powder, to clean up the dough.

hands down

The first thing we should know when it comes to knowing how to make homemade cookies is to prepare the dough. This is the base of the cookies and, despite what it may seem, it is not too difficult to make:

1. In a container of a suitable size for the amount of ingredients, we will put the flour, previously sifted, the sugar and the yeast. 

2. Mix until the dry ingredients are slightly homogeneous and add both the lemon zest and the margarine. This should be at room temperature, to make mixing easier. This mixture, common in almost all homemade cookie recipes, is called dough aeration. The idea is to mix the flour and butter with your hands until you get a more or less sandy texture. It will have little to do with the more liquid texture of the biscuits, so don’t go by that.

3. We open a hole inside the dough, what we would call a volcano, inside which we are going to pour the eggs and the vanilla essence. Again we are going to mix everything well and, when the dough is compact, we will knead it until we achieve a smooth and pleasant finish. This ball is left to rest for a few minutes, covered with a clean cloth. 

4. Once the dough has risen, it’s time to cut.

cutting the cookies

If you take a look at any easy cookie recipe, you will see how there are several options for cutting. It is not essential to have a cookie cutter as such, but we can use almost anything we have at home. The easiest solution is to use a round glass of the size you like best. You can also use craft molds, plating molds… pretty much anything you want.

Before proceeding with the cutting, it is necessary to spread the dough on the table with a rolling pin, throwing a little flour on the work surface. This prevents the dough from sticking when it comes to separating it. Regarding the thickness, it should be rather thin, about half a centimeter, taking into account that the cookies will later grow in the oven. By the way, the leftover dough can be put to good use, so just put it together and roll it out again to make more cookies.

Baking of the cookies

As a last step to know how to make homemade cookies easily, we only have to bake and finish them off. The great thing about this recipe is that baking is simple, so we don’t need a steam oven, damp cloths, or other hassles. It is enough to have a compact oven, a mini oven or a conventional model to proceed. The only precaution we must take is to turn it on at a temperature of 165 degrees and preheat it properly.

We will place the cookies on the trays on baking paper, so that they do not stick to it. In general, 10 minutes of baking is enough for them to be perfect, although it never hurts to visually control the process. Once they are golden, all you have to do is take them out of the oven and let them cool.