This Viral TikTok Hack Gives You A Perfectly Round Chocolate Chip Cookie

Few things are better than the aroma of chocolate chip cookies filling your home. In addition to being a signal of what's soon to come — a delicious snack of fresh, warm cookies – Huffington Post reports that just the aroma of those delectable baked goods can also invoke feelings of nostalgia thanks to a phenomenon called "odor-evoked biographical memory." Perhaps you're transported back to your grandmother's house when you get a whiff of those sweet treats, and the ding of the oven timer might be the only thing that can break your trance. 

The alert triggers excitement inside of you knowing that you finally get to sink your teeth into one (or five) of those bad boys, though it can quickly fade as you pull the baking sheet out of the oven and realize your chocolate chip cookies hardly have the appearance of the ones your grandma baked for you as a child — or are even close to resembling the ones you see online.

Now, we would never condone throwing away cookies for any reason, especially just for the mere fact of being aesthetically off. However, there's no denying the sense of satisfaction that comes from whipping up a batch of Instagram-ready baked goods. How do those Instagrammers do it every time? TikTok user @babychrismom may have found the answer, which they revealed in a post to the social media platform last month. Here's what they do to get perfect chocolate chip cookies every time.

Eat This, Not That! says one trick to making perfectly round chocolate chip cookies is chilling your dough for at least 30 minutes before it goes in the oven, but honestly, who has the patience for that? Not us, which is why we're excited to have stumbled upon TikTok user @babychrismom's hack for how to get aesthetically pleasing cookies every time.

In a now-viral video posted to the platform on December 23, the TikToker can be seen placing the open side of a coffee mug over a misshapen cookie right after taking it out of the oven, which they noted was the key to pulling off the trick. The user then proceeded to swirl the mug around on the tray in a circular motion, and, after a few seconds, lifted it up to reveal that the cookie had been re-shaped into a perfect circle. Many were impressed, though some fans expressed doubt. To further prove the legitimacy, the TikToker shared a follow-up post on December 28 in which they successfully performed the trick again using a clear glass this time.

"Thank you. This is a neat trick," one TikTok user commented on the original video. "This changed my life," another claimed. Others, meanwhile, didn't find the hack quite as necessary since the cookies would taste the same regardless of their shape. This is very true, but considering the round cookie trick takes just seconds to pull off, we see no problem with re-shaping your goodies before digging in. Why not make them look as good as they taste?