This Easy Trick Will Maintain Your Cookies Contemporary For As much as a Week

There’s nothing like a fresh-baked cookie: crisp on the sides and chewy within the middle. And science can clarify why. 

The minute cookies and different baked items like bread and cake exit the oven, a course of referred to as starch retrogradation begins. Earlier than baking, the neatly organized starch molecules in flour break down when it’s combined with different substances for a batter or dough. However as your baked items cool, the starch molecules recrystallize, leaving you with a dried-out product. It’s why they develop into stale.

Publicity to air accelerates the retrogradation course of, that means you shouldn’t depart your cookies out on a plate (regardless of how good they give the impression of being). Storing your gentle sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies in an hermetic container in your countertop can maintain them tasting contemporary for up to a couple days. However you’ll be able to prolong their life even additional, and the answer lies in your cabinet (or maybe your bread field): a contemporary slice of white bread. Merely add it to the identical hermetic container together with cookies which have gone stale; it is going to soften them in a matter of some hours.

Why this trick works

As a result of contemporary bread comprises a comparatively excessive quantity of moisture (about 35–42%), including a slice to an hermetic container alongside together with your cookies works to rehydrate them. Just a few issues to bear in mind: The bread you’re utilizing must be contemporary, or this trick gained’t work. Use plain white bread to maintain the bread’s taste from affecting the cookies’ style, and stick to 1 slice. (Extra slices equals extra moisture, and which may trigger mildew or mushiness.)

The bread slice trick additionally works with different gentle baked items like brownies or a slice of cake. Merely change out the bread when it begins to harden. 

Different methods to maintain cookies gentle

• Maintain cookies in an hermetic container or ziplock bag, storing in a single layer if attainable.
• Retailer at room temperature. The fridge can even trigger retrogradation, inflicting the starch molecules of your cookies to crystallize and harden. 
• Freezing, alternatively, slows the retrogradation course of down, as a result of the water within the bread is frozen and the starch molecules gained’t recrystallize. You possibly can maintain baked cookies in an hermetic container in your freezer for as much as three months. 
• Retailer gentle cookies individually from exhausting, crispy cookies (resembling biscotti). The crispy cookies will take up the chewy cookies’ moisture, inflicting your gentle cookies to harden — and your exhausting cookies to melt. 
• Don’t overbake your cookies! Take them out of the oven as quickly as the edges and edges are golden brown; you’ll be able to all the time crisp them up extra later.