The Secret Trick To Making Crinkled Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hours upon hours and countless cups of flour have been dedicated to achieving the perfect chocolate chip cookie. But, crinkled chocolate chip cookies might be the ones to beat them all. A crinkled cookie appeals to the masses because it offers the coveted combination of a soft, chewy center and thin, crispy edges, according to The Kitchn. If you've ever baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies, you know how difficult it is to strike a balance between those two textures.

Maybe you've tried adjusting your baking time or temperature or switching up ingredients to give your cookies deliciously crisped edges. Or maybe you've seen recipes like blogger and cookbook author Sarah Kieffer's one for Pan-Banging Chocolate Chip Cookies, which includes instructions for lightly banging hot cookie sheets onto your oven grate while the cookies bake, forcing the puffy centers to deflate. It turns out, there's an easier way to achieve crinkled chocolate chip cookie perfection and the secret trick is all in how you shape your cookie dough balls before baking. Splitting and stacking them is the key.

In order to achieve deliciously crinkled cookies, all you need to do is split your cookie dough balls in half and stack them up tall before baking. No fussing with ingredients and no fiddling with hot sheet pans – just simply shape and bake. The Kitchn shared this technique from cookbook author Shauna Server and the results are that signature crinkled cookie look and drool-worthy texture. 

To put this trick to work in your kitchen, scoop out your dough balls as you normally would, then refrigerate them for an hour. Before baking, simply tear each chilled dough ball in half and stack one half on top of the other. Then, bake according to your recipe's instructions. Though the dough may look odd and misshapen compared to perfectly round balls of dough, the height of the stacked dough balls will allow them to spread more slowly in the oven, giving the edges more time to get golden and crispy. Meanwhile, the centers of your cookies stay soft and chewy. What can we say? Round cookie dough balls are #basic. We're all in for stacked dough and crinkled cookies.