Who doesn’t love a freshly baked cookie? From pumpkin chocolate chip to soft and chewy peanut butter, warm cookies from the oven just make everything better. But if time or skill aren’t on your side to make a batch from scratch, you can make a store-bought dough taste more homemade. All it takes is the addition of one staple pantry ingredient: brown sugar.
For this expert tip, Food Republic spoke with Audra Fullerton, head recipe developer and baking expert at The Baker Chick. “Brown sugar contains molasses, which not only gives cookies a warm, caramelized flavor, but the extra moisture can affect texture as well,” she explained. “I always use brown sugar for a chewier cookie.” However, she cautioned that adding brown sugar to a store-bought mixture could yield an overly saccharine result and offered an alternative. “Since sugar has likely been added already, I’d consider adding 1 tablespoon of molasses, which will enhance the flavor and texture without adding too much sweetness.” To incorporate brown sugar (or molasses) into a commercial dough, you can mix it in by hand or use an electric mixer. Softening the dough at room temperature for 10 minutes, or until it’s workable, can help if the dough is too stiff. In this state, it is also prepped for bringing other enhancers into the mix.
How to enhance store-bought cookie dough
Factory-made cookie mix can have chemical or other artificial flavor notes that are a dead giveaway it’s a processed product. About ¼ teaspoon of an extract such as mint or almond can effectively cover up that unwanted aftertaste. A vanilla bean paste is also a good option, lending both enhanced flavor and a homemade appearance with those little dark flecks – definitely not characteristics of a store-bought dough!
Some other simple mix-ins to elevate a premade product include chopped nuts, grated citrus zest, and candy. Leftover candy corn can add surprisingly sophisticated flavor dimensions to cookies, for example. A sprinkle of flaked salt atop your treats before baking is another easy addition with big impact. The flaky salt deepens the cookies’ flavor, contrasts with the sweetness, and lends a gourmet-esque visual enhancement to your goodies that is anything but cookie-cutter.
If you chill your enhanced dough before baking it, it helps further concentrate the newly added flavors. A trip to the fridge for anywhere from 15 minutes to overnight can also improve the texture of your cookies; store-bought doughs tend to flatten out when they bake, but a pre-bake chilling can help mitigate the spread and keep the treats softer.
