Delicious Ginger Cookies also Have Doneness Temps!

At time of writing, baking season is well upon us (depending on how you bake, that could be ANY time of year, but it’s early December as I type), and cookies are on the mind. One of our perennial favorites is the chewy ginger cookie. Spiced and festive, they’re a perfect cookie for winter giving or a cookie exchange party. But whether you’re giving them away or eating them all yourself (a plausible outcome, indeed) you want them to be perfectly done. How do you know when a cookie is done? Temperature! Read on to get the temperature tips you need for perfect chewy ginger cookies.

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What makes these cookies chewy?

We’re talking here about ginger chews not ginger snaps, and there are a couple things that make them chewy. First, there’s the molasses. Molasses holds on to its water very strongly, so having a good dose of it in our cookies makes for slower evaporation and stalling once the cookies are cooked. Brown sugar has molasses in it (that’s what makes it brown), so that’s one more layer of chewiness. (If you were to replace the brown sugar with white sugar, the cookies would be a little drier, a little crumblier, a little tougher.)

And of course, one thing that will keep them chewy is not overcooking them. Now, this isn’t to say that ginger snaps are overcooked, but for chewy ginger cookies, we will aim for a lower doneness temp than we might for a snap. A ginger snap may have a little less molasses and a little more white sugar as starting ingredients, but in the end, how much water is cooked out will be the determining factor for whether your cookies are soft and chewy or crispy and snappy.

Do cookies have doneness temperatures?

It may seem odd to specify a doneness temp for cookies. After all, don’t you just cook them until they’re golden brown on top? Well, no, and for several reasons. In the case of these brown cookies, for instance, if you cooked them until there was a noticeable brown color, they’d be well overcooked. But more than that, for any moist and chewy cookie, a brown color may indicate that you’ve gone a stop or two too far. A brown top is sufficient, yes, but it is not necessary.

The thinness of cookies calls for a high-quality digital thermometer, like Thermapen ONE. The reduced tip and tiny sensor size on Thermapen ONE allows it to take the internal temperature of even the thinnest cookies. (Dial thermometers need inches of immersion into a food item to read properly, something that is impossible with cookies.) And with 0.5°F accuracy, you’re getting much better information that if you, say, stuck a cookie with a toothpick to see how gooey it still is.

Cooking cookies to time vs to temperature

Obviously most cookie recipes give you a baking time. But that range (usually of 2–5 minutes) is sometimes pretty wide. And it doesn’t take into account the fact that your oven might be running different than it ought to. Cooking to temp is far more accurate than cooking to time alone—but that doesn’t mean there isn’t space for a timer. Set your Extra Big & Loud Timer for the closest recommended cooking time, and when it rings, test the cookies with your Thermapen ONE.

Great cookies every time

By knowing what temp you take your cookies form the oven, you can count on them being the same every time—batch after batch after batch. So whether you make these delicious ginger cookies for snacking over the weekend or for gifting, you can know they’ll be perfect. Give them a shot, but be warned: they are tasty and you’ll need to make more soon! Happy cooking!