The Trick For Soft, Chewy, Bakery-Worthy Cookies This Holiday Season

The ability to make great cookies at home is one that most bakers aspire to obtain, but one that anyone can achieve through specific strategies. While there are scientific and precision-based ways to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookie at home, there are also underused ingredients you can incorporate to level up the sweet treat and make it as tender and delectable as possible — ingredients you likely never even thought of. Chief among these is the pudding packet, which helps your cookies retain their moisture as they bake. This results in cookies that not only feel soft and bakery-esque when they come out of the oven, but that also retain their softness in the days to follow.

Pudding mix is known to have a positive impact on baked goods across the board, with its use alongside boxed cake mix being a great way to make any kind of cake better than ever in terms of both taste and texture. However, as far as cookies are concerned, this strategy is most commonly used with the moisture of the treats in mind. Many who have utilized this technique have recommended specifically vanilla-flavored pudding mix to prevent this secret ingredient from having too much of an impact on the taste of your cookie recipe.

Using a pudding packet in a cookie recipe is similar to the method of adding cornstarch to cookies, which can also make them much softer. Adding 1 to 2 teaspoons of pudding mix per cup of flour is enough to have that softening effect without robbing the cookies of their structure. For best results, subtract however much pudding mix you plan on adding from the flour. For example, if you're adding 1 teaspoon of pudding mix, then remove 1 teaspoon of flour from the recipe; effectively substituting the pudding mix in its place. Normally, bakers recommend chilling cookie batter after it's been mixed together to better bond the ingredients, but some have suggested the step isn't actually necessary when pudding mix is added.

However you go about it, adding pudding mix to cookies works for many of the most popular kinds of the classic treat. While we all love soft and gooey chocolate chip cookies, you can also use the ingredient for sugar cookies (which are known to dry out quite easily) or special Christmas cookies, if you'd like to preserve their tenderness for as long as possible.