Crispy Gingersnaps | Ginger Snap Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why are my ginger biscuits not crispy? ›

Bake for longer.

This is a pretty simple one, but to get that lovely crunchy gingersnap cookie, I increased the bake time slightly. If you want them even more crunchy, bake them for a little longer!

Using low-moisture ingredients such as granulated sugar and vegetable shortening will get you to the level of light and crispy you want. Adding milk will also help the cookies spread in the oven and produce crispier edges.

Molasses cookie dough won't have those signature cracks on top if the dough is too wet. The cracks happen when the surface of the dough dries up. Rolling in sugar really helps this because the sugar binds the moisture and dries out the dough.

If you use too much butter, the cookies will end up flat and greasy. And if you use too little flour, the amount of butter and sugar will be proportionally too high, meaning the cookies will spread for the aforementioned reasons.

For a crisper and more browned biscuit, scone or shortcake, fat pieces should be the size of peas. Learn more about Fats in Baking. Bake biscuits, scones or shortcakes on cookie sheets or jelly-roll pans (baking pans with 1/2-inch high sides). Leave at least 1-inch space between biscuits.

Here are several reasons why your ginger snap cookies might have turned out hard: Overbaking: Cookies can become hard if they are baked for too long. Make sure to bake these cookies for 20 minutes at 300 degrees F. Too little moisture: If you didn't add enough liquid to the dough, the cookies can become dry and hard.

Using lower-moisture sugar (granulated) and fat (vegetable shortening), plus a longer, slower bake than normal, produces light, crunchy cookies. That said, using a combination of butter and vegetable shortening (as in the original recipe), or even using all butter, will make an acceptably crunchy chocolate chip cookie.

The temperature of your oven plays a huge role in the texture of your cookies! A lower oven temperature will give your cookies more time to spread before they start to rise, resulting in a crispier cookie. I recommend baking your cookies for a bit longer at a lower temperature to achieve the texture you're looking for.

“Cornstarch is a game changer for cookie baking,” confirms Brian Hart Hoffman, editor in chief of Bake from Scratch. “You can count on [it for] a softer and more tender crumb.”

Why are my crinkle cookies not crinkling? If the dough is too wet, then it will dissolve the sugar and the crinkle will get lost. In order for a defined crinkle to form, the surface of the dough needs to be dry. If your cookies are not crinkling then there is too much free water in the dough.

How to get crinkle top on cookies? ›

While we found that multiple factors can affect how quickly the top dries out and thus how many cracks are formed (including the temperature of the dough and how rapidly it spreads in the oven), a simple tweak turned out to be key to producing a maximum number of fissures: rolling the balls of dough in granulated sugar ...

So how do you know that they're done? Here's how to tell if gingerbread cookies are done: They'll be firmly set. They'll be a lovely medium-brown color.

Not Enough Flour

If your cookies are flat, brown, crispy, and possibly even a bit lacy around the edges, that means you need to add flour to your dough for the next batch.

Q: Why are my cookies so puffy and cakey? Whipping too much air into the dough. That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies.

Molasses and honey hardens gingerbread, but as the sugar absorbs moisture, it will get softer.” Cookbook author and ”Great American Baking Show” winner Vallery Lomas likes a gingerbread cookie that's packed with flavor.

The easiest way to make soft biscuits crispy again is to reheat them in an oven at 350°F (177°C) for about 5–10 minutes. You can also try toasting them in a toaster oven or air fryer.

As in bread, starch from the flour in biscuits begins to crystalize after a few days, theoretically making biscuits more brittle. But in many biscuits, the high sugar content masks this process by absorbing water from the atmosphere, ultimately resulting in a soft biscuit.