Glazed Cookies, Photo Jeff Stockton

There’s something satisfying about making cookies, and fortunately, most recipes are fairly simple and deliver reliable and tasty results.

But sometimes, even the best of us end up with a fail. Ack!

So following are some tips we hope you find helpful as you follow the cookie crumbs down the trail and to a world of baking fun.

Baking cookies, for a lot of us, is an impulse decision. We get a hankerin’ for something sweet and chewy or crispy or chocolatey, and then grab a cookbook or hop online and find the recipe we want to make and then commence the process only to find we’re missing ingredients. The  horror! Therefore, always read the recipe from beginning to end BEFORE getting started. This is true whether you’re making cookies, calfoutis [a French dessert consisting of cherries suspended in a pancake-like batter], or corned beef.

Anna Ginsberg, the 2006 Pillsbury Bake-Off grand champion and baker and brains behind the food blog Cookie Madness,  recommends all bakers buy a digital kitchen scale for accurate measurements. She says a cup of flour may weigh more or less depending on how it’s scooped into the measuring cup or how humid it is on the day you’re baking. If you aim for 4.5 ounces of flour per cup Anna says you’ll always have the right amount of flour, and a digital scale will remove the guesswork from the process.

Another tip is to use room temperature ingredients. By doing this your cookie dough will come together more quickly and more smoothly–no annoying lumps.

Chill the dough before you bake it. Anna does this because she says chilled dough easier to work with. In addition, she says chilling the dough improves the flavor and allows the dough to relax a bit.

If the cookies you’re making are drop cookies, invest in a cookie scoop. Some look like small ice cream scoops. Others look like coffee scoops with a pliable silicone bottom that allows you to push the dough ball from the hollow of the scoop. In any event, cooking will bake more evenly if they are all the same size.

Use insulated cookie sheets. You’re less likely to burn the bottoms of your cookies when you use them.

Cover the cookie sheet with either nonstick foil, parchment paper or a silicone mat. Doing so not only helps with cleanup later, but also allows the cookies to release from the pan more reliably, so there are fewer broken cookies in every batch.