No-Bake Christmas Tree Cookies - The Recipe Rebel (2024)

FAQs

Why won't my no bake cookies get hard? ›

You want the butter, milk, sugar, and cocoa mixture to boil for 2-3 full minutes and reach between 190°F-200°F. If you don't boil them for long enough, they will turn out gooey and will not set.

Based on this data from General Mills, Peanut Butter Blossoms are the most popular Christmas cookie in the country; it's the most-visited cookie recipe in seven states, which means it's the most common favorite cookie in the U.S. That's a pretty high honor!

Boiling too long will cause the cookies to be dry and crumbly. However, if you don't boil long enough the cookies will not set and will be runny. Some folks say bring the mixture to a rolling boil and then count to 60, while others swear by counting to 90.

Just follow your regular recipe as usual , but only put enough milk in to be able to stir your mixture. Bring to a slow boil, stirring constantly to ensure your sugar melts evenly so it won't be grainy. Bring to a full rolling boil for one minute and you should have perfect no-bake every time.

Baking at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature will help cookies stay soft: they'll bake faster which means they aren't in the hot, drying air of the oven too long.

Cookies become hard when the moisture in them evaporates. This can be caused by leaving them out in the air for too long, baking them for too long, or storing them improperly. The lack of moisture makes the cookies hard and dry, which makes them difficult to enjoy.

On the naughty list of cookies, Americans gave the lowest win records to anise cookies, which only won 29% of its matchups.

Chocolate Chip cookies

Santa himself lists these as his favorites, and he prefers them soft and gooey with lots of chocolate chips. If you decide to leave these out for him, make sure there's a glass of cold milk nearby!

Oreo is the best-selling cookie in the world. It is now sold in over 100 countries. Oreo was first produced in 1912 by the National Biscuit Company, now known as Na-Bis-Co.

To avoid this, try using as little flour as possible while preparing to roll your dough. Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

Why do my cookies go flat when I take them out of the oven? ›

OVEN IS TOO HOT

Oven temperatures are a crucial factor in baking. If your cookies consistently come out flat, you may have selected the wrong baking temperature. If you bake cookies using too much heat, the fats in the dough begin to melt before the other ingredients can cook together and form your cookie's rise.

Cookies that are liquidy, sticky, or won't set: You probably didn't boil your mixture long enough. This can happen from simply rushing or from high humidity in your environment.

Brown sugar is key. Brown sugar has molasses in it which is like a more liquid ingredient. This keeps the dough kind of wet/moist when baking through. It is also used for soft cookies as the overall cookie dough wouldn't spread as much as compared to white sugar.

“To keep cookies soft, store them in an airtight container and not in a cookie jar,” Amanda recommends. “While cookie jars are cute, they usually don't have airtight lids.

Decrease the number of eggs in your recipe, or use egg yolks in place of whole eggs. Too high a ratio of brown sugar to white sugar. Increase the ratio of white sugar to brown sugar, or use all white sugar. Using corn syrup will also help crisp up a cookie when it bakes.

It's all about moisture. To keep it simple, cookie recipes that contain a lot of butter, brown sugar or egg yolks are going to yield soft and chewy cookies, because those ingredients add moisture and retain it for a longer amount of time.

According to The Kitchn, this occurs when you over-mix the dough. Mixing the dough naturally causes gluten to develop in the flour, and while you do need a good amount of gluten to give your cookies structure, too much of it will result in hard cookies.

To make cookies crispy, add less liquid or bake it in the oven for longer to dry out the dough. Generally bake around 13-15min at 180C for a crispy cookie. But if you want a thoroughly crispy cookie – not those just charred on the outside – decrease the temperature to 140C and bake for 30min.