Pastry chef Rebecca Masson has transformed classic cookies into more unconventional treats. At Fluff Bake Bar, her popular bakery in Houston, Texas, the pastry case is stocked with potato-chip-laced chocolate chip cookies, bacon-fat ginger snaps, and snickerdoodles dusted with rainbow sugar crystals. For events, she’s even made over-the-top cookies featuring a decadent foie gras caramel or a toasted meringue topping.
Whipping up batches of these creative cookies starts with nailing the basics. According to Masson, baking is all about paying attention to the details. “I may be a troublemaker, but I’m a rule follower at heart,” she says. When a recipe calls for room-temperature eggs or resting the dough for 24 hours in the fridge, the pastry chef emphasizes that you shouldn’t skip these seemingly gratuitous steps. “Follow the steps that are put out in front of you — they’re there for a reason,” she says.
Even when closely following a recipe, Masson finds there are a few details you can adjust to take your cookies up a notch. Don’t ignore the instructions; add these small tweaks. The pastry chef will be serving some of her signature creative cookies at Hot Luck Live Food & Music — a weekend-long event that features bites from some of the best chefs in the country — in Austin, Texas, this month. While chatting with Masson about which sweets she’ll be serving at the food festival, we learned a few new tips for baking perfect cookies at home.
Sprinkle salt on top
Masson firmly believes that salt is the secret to flavor-packed cookies. The “Couch Potato” is one of her bakery’s most popular cookies, incorporating savory elements like potato chips, pretzels, and cornflakes with sweet add-ins such as marshmallows and chocolate chips. “Salt balances out sugar, which allows the other ingredients to shine,” she explains.
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According to the pastry chef, most homemade cookie recipes don’t call for nearly enough salt. “Usually cookies call for a quarter teaspoon of salt, and I’m like, ‘That’s not enough,’” Masson notes. If you’re making a standard cookie recipe, she recommends adding between three-quarters of a teaspoon and a full teaspoon of salt. If the cookies are undersalted after baking, add a sprinkle of her favorite flaky salt from Jacobsen Salt Co. The pastry chef reports that it’s especially delicious on a chocolate chip or peanut butter cookie.
Support the structure of your cookies
Although it’s not necessary for most cookie recipes, a silicone baking mold is the key to effortlessly improving results for some treats. If you’re baking a cookie packed with mix-ins — like Masson’s Couch Potato — a mold will give it structure without adding flour that may affect the final texture. (Most silicone baking molds come in sheets, and you can easily find one on Amazon.)
Other baking molds, such as a simple metal ring used to cut cookies or biscuits, can be used after baking to perfect their shape. “We call it the ring scoot,” Masson explains. “If cookies get a little misshapen or craggy, you can do a ring scoot just to make it a little more round.” Want to make sure cookies look perfect before you bring them to a party? Roughly 30 to 45 seconds after they come out of the oven, use a ring mold (or even the open rim of a large glass) to make a circular motion around each one, gently smoothing its edges into a circle.
Invest in a cookie scoop
Metal scoops help produce uniform batches of cookies that bake evenly.Credit: LindasPhotography / Getty Images
Professional bakeries often use a 2-ounce scoop to measure dough and ensure each cookie in the pastry case is the same size. Home bakers can use the same technique to achieve uniform, professional-style cookies at home. Cookies that are identical in size will also bake more evenly, making it easier to nail the perfect level of doneness across an entire batch.
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Masson likes scoops from brands including Vollrath, OXO, and King Arthur. (She notes that many home recipes are designed to make cookies that weigh roughly 1 ounce or an ounce-and-a-half.) Brands like King Arthur offer scoop sets in different sizes to accommodate different recipes. A scoop also makes it easy to treat yourself to cookies at a later date. Quickly scoop individual balls of dough, pop them in the freezer, and, as Masson says, “you can bake fresh cookies all the time.”
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