"Thomas R. Leith" > wrote in message
link.net...
<snip>
>
> I'd thought maybe butter nowadays has a higher milk content or soemthing,
> and I should try to adjust the flour upwards to compensate. But the
> cookiesheet thread suggests a couple more possibilities.
>
> We use air-cushioned pans. Do they not heat-up quick enough, and let the
> butter melt before the flour, sugar, and eggs start to "set"? Can this be
> why my cookies are too flat?
>

I think I mentioned (here or somewhere else) about the article in Fine
Cooking or Cook's Illustrated. They did say that air-cushioned or insulated
pans do tend to cause the butter to melt out of cookies.

If you do have some regular (or even non-stick) baking sheets, there's no
harm in trying them for at least one batch. They're fairly cheap, too, so
you can always pick up one that could double as a jelly-roll pan if they
don't work out for cookies.

> We bought a box of frozen, unbaked cookies from some school fundraiser and
> we don't have trouble with these. But maybe they're made with shortening
> instead of butter, or baking them from frozen mitigates the problem.
>
> Any ideas??
>

The fat could also be the cause. Or perhaps your cookie dough is too warm.
I would first try changing cookie sheets. Then if that doesn't work, try
chilling the dough a bit before baking. If that still doesn't work, try
substituting some of the butter with shortening. Personally, I only like
using butter for baked goods so I would suffer through flat, spread-out
cookies rather than use shortening, but that's just me :-).

rona

--
***For e-mail, replace .com with .ca Sorry for the inconvenience!***