Immediate Care for Freshly Baked Cookies

I received another incidental lesson from my baking sheet calibration experiments today. I baked numerous batches yesterday night, and after the cookies cooled I notice that some batches snapped when they were broken - they were nice and crispy - and some didn't. The ones that snapped were crunchy when I ate them, and the ones that didn't snap were slightly chewy, but had a dull, uninteresting texture. I finally realized that it was the texture of unbaked cookies. I actually like chewy cookies, but these were much better crispy. I left the cookies out overnight and through today, and tonight when I checked them again, there isn't much difference between the ones that snapped and the ones that didn't the night before - they all distinctly break, and the ones that snapped in two no longer "snap," they just break. As do the others.

Interesting! I never much got the point of keeping cookies in cookie tins or cookie jars, except it was a convenient place to put them. I certainly understood that the purpose was to protect them from air and moisture, but I never noticed a difference before. Now I see the difference! If you have a crispy cookie and leave it out in the air for even twenty-four hours, it will lose its crispness. And cookies that are not quite fully baked will become harder, basically through a drying and solidifying process which leaves a different result from simply baking them to crispness in the first place.

The crispness of the cookies the night I took them out of the oven was far superior to the thick heavy break the next day. That's a great lesson - get cookies in a cookie tin or other airtight container the same day they are baked.

(Addendum from a later date - I read that crispy cookies should not be in airtight containers, but should allow some access by air. Maybe the refrigerator is the key? Anyway, they definitely changed for the worse overnight.)

I've read many times that cookies have to fully cool before they're put away. I'm not sure exactly what the effect of not doing so is, but I trust that advice because I've seen it so often. That has an unfortunate implication - if I stay up late at night baking cookies, I will have to stay up much later yet if I want to get them put away at the best time. Otherwise I have to wait until morning to put them away, and by then that great texture is going to be significantly compromised. I bet for some cookies it doesn't matter much, though. I wonder how you know when it doesn't matter? These particular cookies are pretty thin and should be crisp. Maybe it doesn't matter for thick chewy cookies...