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Got too much butter in your cookies and hoping that you can fix cookie dough with too much butter?
It’s a common baking mistake to add too much butter, mostly because you either read the recipe wrong or you weren’t paying attention (we’ve all been there).
And now you’re going to bake the cookies, realizing that there is far too much butter and you have no idea what to do.
While it’s not going to get you a place on the Bake Off anytime soon, all is not lost.
You’ve basically got 2 options here, each with their own pros and cons.
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1. Bake anyway and have flat cookies
If you really weren’t paying attention and you have no idea how much butter is in the dough compared to the rest of the ingredients or don’t want to alter the dough that much, just stick them in the oven anyway.
You’re going to end up with flatter cookies – that is a promise.
Butter spreads in the oven and the more you add, the more the cookies will flatten out on the tray, but it doesn’t mean that you have too much butter in there to absolutely ruin the cookies.
To go the extra mile, if you’re going to bake them anyway, there are a few things you can do to help the baking process, like chilling the dough for 2 hours beforehand (makes the butter spread less because it will take longer to melt) or you can make sure the baking sheets you’re using are completely cool (even put them in the fridge if you want) as this will also stop the butter from melting and the cookies from spreading so quickly.
2. Change the other ingredients proportionally
The problem with adding too much butter once it’s mixed in is that you really can’t remove it from the dough – it’s already mixed in.
So what now?
Start adding other ingredients.
If you added, say, double the amount of butter and then realized once you mixed it all together, add enough of the other ingredients to mean that you doubled their amounts too.
Yes, you’ll end up with a giant batch of cookies, but it’s the easiest way to save your cookies if you’re open to altering the dough.
Some ingredients may not mix up as well as they did when you put them in in the right order, but the chances are you’ll end up with edible cookies that have the right proportions and structure as opposed to really flat cookies like you’d get with the first option.
This really only works if you have any sort of clue of how much butter you added over the recipe amount, as otherwise you’re just going to start adding other ingredients in the wrong proportions.
If you aren’t sure, but are open to test baking, then start slow and add in more of the other ingredients gradually, baking a few dough balls to see if they turn out okay, and then adding more if you need to for later batches.
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