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Today, we’re going over our favorite tips to prevent cookies from spreading. Cookies that spread too thin during baking can become overly baked, burnt, and just plain hard and difficult to eat. And I'll say, no one wants burnt cookies. These tips are the first step to help you preserve the delicious bite of a perfectly baked good.

Did you know that Americans consume over 2 billion cookies each year? However, only 4.8 percent of American households don’t eat cookies, which isn’t a surprise to those of us with a passion for baking and a sweet tooth for our favorite cookie recipes.

Butter Temperature

When mixing your cookie dough, it’s important to use butter at room temperature. Cold butter won’t only mix into horrible chunks, but it will result in strange consistencies as the butter fails to properly bind with the sugar in your dough.

Butter that is too warm or melted will similarly prevent your cookies from holding shape at all, and you will get cookie spread. This common reason for cookie spread will result in runaway cookie mounds that slip and slide and might not even form on your cookie sheet resulting in very flat cookies.

To help prevent your cookies from either of these disasters, remember to set out your butter ahead of other ingredients for your dough. First, cut out the amount of butter you intend to use, then set it aside while you measure and mix other ingredients. This will allow your butter to properly soften before mixing, and cutting it ahead of time will quicken the softening process, too. If you are running short on time, take a look at our write-up on how to quickly soften butter.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. So go with the right butter temperature that your recipe is calling for. When a recipe calls for room temperature butter, make sure it’s just soft enough that it’ll make an ident if you poke it.

If a cookie recipe calls for cold or chilled butter, use it straight from the fridge. If a cookie recipe calls for melted butter, only then can you use butter that’s completely melted. 

Check Your Flour

With a little care and experimentation, there’s no flour in a recipe that can’t be replaced with another! Simply substituting all-purpose flour in a recipe with no prior preparation can result in cookies that spread or fall apart. There is nothing worse than messing up a great recipe by making a flour swap error.

Pastry flour, for example, has less gluten when compared to all-purpose flour. Therefore, if you use this flour instead of standard AP flour in a cookie recipe, your cookies will have less structure from gluten formation. This will result in cookie spreading and a less-than-optimal cookie texture.

Instead of replacing flour in a recipe haphazardly, consider making a trip to the market for the flour specified. Alternatively, put a bit of time into researching how you might be able to replace the flour in your recipe with another flour you have on hand. For example, this could reduce the number of liquid ingredients in other parts of the recipe or change the amount of flour from the specified amount.

Also, I always recommend using a kitchen scale to measure your flour. Too much flour will result in tough cookies. Read more about the different flours and when to use them here.

Don’t Overmix Butter and Sugar

Overmixing your butter and sugar creates a huge risk of cookie spreading. This can result in essentially melted butter that is liquidy instead of creamy. It can also result in an overwhipped dough. Overwhipped dough has too much air in the mix, causing the collapse of your baked goods in the oven.

It’s heartbreaking to watch cookies rise before falling apart and leaving craters in the center! Don’t leave the stand mixer running unattended. Instead, cream your butter and sugar for only a couple of minutes with an electric mixer, or whip by hand if you have the muscle power and patience.

The Right Temperature For Your Cookie Dough

One of the easiest ways to give your cookies a bit of resistance to spreading is to refrigerate or freeze your raw cookie dough before baking! Warm cookie dough tends to spread in the oven. About an hour in the fridge after mixing your dough is considered the minimum amount of time to ensure that the dough is chilled all the way through. A cold cookie dough takes a bit longer in the oven to spread. Usually, you are done with the baking before they get a chance to spread. So if your recipe calls for a chilling step, don't skip it.

Some bakers also swear by freezing their cookie dough before baking, and baking them from frozen, too! This can create a cookie that is perfectly melty on the inside. The biggest downside to this method is the amount of freezer space you might need to use since you’ll have to shape your cookies ahead of time and keep them from sticking to one another.

Temperature Of Your Oven

Depending on your cookie recipe, a wide range of oven temperatures can create the perfect cookie consistency. Cookies are typically baked around 350℉. A lower temperature often requires longer baking times and more opportunities for your cookies to spread.

What’s tricky about oven temperatures is that not all ovens are made the same! So if you’re suddenly struggling with your favorite recipes, try investing in an oven thermometer. Often our ovens are brought up to approximate temperatures vs. the ones that are actually marked.

If your cookies are still coming out a bit too thin or even melty, try increasing your oven temperature to 375℉. In this scenario, you'll have to keep a closer eye on your shorter bake time, but it can be worth it for that perfect bite!

Reshaping Spreading Cookies

It may not be the neatest option, but you can force your cookies to stop spreading by using a spoon or other utensil during the baking process! It’s great to learn how to optimize your cookie batter to prevent spreading cookies, to begin with, but what about the cookies you’ve already whipped up?

Remove them from the oven as soon as you notice them starting to spread. Then use a spoon or other utensil to push the edges of each cookie back toward its center. Place your batch back in the oven and watch them (hopefully) bake as usual! You can repeat this twice during a bake, but your batter might be too liquid to hold shape if you need to do so continuously. Your best bet is to have a solid recipe for your batch of cookies.

Preventing Cookies from Spreading

Nobody likes an overspread cookie. They are often burnt on the bottom and thin throughout. This leaves you with nothing more than an enjoyable version of a cookie crisp. Thankfully, tips to prevent cookies from spreading are easy to implement and often require minor adjustments.

Use your butter at room temperature, and keep a strict time limit on creaming your butter and sugar together. Try increasing your oven temperature for a shorter bake time if they continue to spread, and it's always a good idea to test your temperature with an oven thermometer for accuracy. Use parchment paper on your baking tray and let your cooking sheet cool off if you reuse it. Never put your dough on a hot baking sheet. Finally, don’t be scared to interrupt your bake and physically push your spreading cookies back into place. You’ll have deliciously thick, chewy cookies in no time.

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About 297.78 million Americans used butter in 2020, and it’s no wonder! Butter provides not just an excellent base for flaky baked goods, but it also gives us that too-delicious buttery taste that makes pastries a simple delight.

Butter has been blamed for causing heart disease in the past due to it being a high-calorie food with high saturated fat content. However, many studies have failed to find a connection between heart disease and saturated fat intake. At the end of the day, any food eaten in moderation is vital.

When baking or preparing meals with butter, it’s essential to prepare it correctly for excellent buttery taste and not waste calories. Today, we’re learning how to quickly soften butter to save you from crumbling dough and burnt butter pans.

The Importance of Softened Butter

We’ve all run into a recipe (or multiple) that calls for room temperature butter. Butter is a crucial ingredient for flaky pastries and baked goods, as the ingredient can hold air but also expand, creating tiny air pockets of buttery goodness.

Countless baking recipes, think of your favorite cookie recipes or pie doughs, ask for you to “cream together butter and sugar” as a first step. This process produces fluffy mounds of buttery and sugary goodness but can be confusing to achieve for new and veteran bakers alike.

When creaming together butter and sugar, your butter needs to be soft enough to react with the sugar properly. This is because of the fat content in butter, which responds perfectly with the jagged edges of sugar crystals to take in air into your mix. This creates a light and fluffy texture in minutes with an electric mixer and a few more minutes when beaten by hand.

If your butter isn’t properly softened ahead of time, the sugar crystals will start cutting into your cold pieces of butter and create small granules of chunky butter/sugar bits. This is unappetizing, but if you continue with this mix and try to make any sort of dough to follow, you’re bound to have an uneven bake and random globs of butter after the fact. Yuck!

Thankfully, softened butter isn’t as soft as you first might believe. It should still feel cool to the touch, and many use a finger indentation to tell when their butter is ready! Here are some other easy methods to soften butter ahead of your baking.

Softening Butter at Room Temperature

The most obvious and classic way to soften butter at room temperature is to let it sit at room temperature on your kitchen counter! When softening a whole stick of butter from the fridge, it will take about an hour or more of sitting time to soften. It depends on your room temperature, but an hour is a good rule of thumb. This method will give you the most consistent results with minimal effort. But it does take the most extended amount of time.

This seems like a lot of time, but it might be the easiest way and no big deal for those who like butter on our toast and take the ingredient out before preparing breakfast. Take out a bit extra, and you’ll be ready when it comes time to bake with soft butter.

Slicing Butter at Room Temperature

For many recipes, particularly those in baking, creaming your butter and sugar together will be your first step. But if you take the time to cut your cold butter into small cubes and measure out your other ingredients afterward,  you might find that your butter softens to the perfect consistency just before you need it! In addition, cutting butter ahead of time in smaller pieces increases its surface area, letting your room’s warmer temperature heat it a bit faster.

A similar method to soften your butter involves more labor, a rolling pin, and wax or parchment paper. First, place your pre-measured or cut butter between two pieces of wax paper. Next, grab your rolling pin, and get to work flattening and spreading out those sticks of butter! Finally, lift off the top piece of wax paper and let your softened butter sit for a few minutes until room temperature.

If you put enough time and muscle into this step, your butter might be room temperature already after rolling out. So, this is the faster softening method for impatient bakers.

Softening Butter With the Microwave Method

Another common yet riskier way to soften butter is to pop it in the microwave and heat it. You’ll only want to do this for a few seconds, and it might take some testing to get the right amount of time, depending on your butter amount.

When tackling this method, place your butter in the microwave, and heat it for a few seconds. I usually use a low power level on the microwave to ensure I don't overcook it. Then attempt to mix the butter into a creamy consistency in its bowl. Repeat until the butter is malleable.

You can try an easy kitchen hack known as an indirect microwaving method if you have a smaller amount of butter to work with. Instead of microwaving the butter directly, microwave a small bowl or cup of water for a few minutes. Immediately remove the water bowl and place your butter inside the microwave with residual heat. Close the door, and let it sit in the microwave for a bit. This method can produce room temperature butter at a higher success rate if you're quick enough.

Indirectly Heating Butter

Yet another great way to indirectly heat your butter to room temperature is to heat some water in a large bowl or container. Next, place your butter in a smaller bowl or container. This could even be something as simple as a zip-top plastic bag. Let it lightly sit inside the bowl of hot water to dethaw and warm.

Submerging the smaller bowl into the larger one will quicken this process. This is a great option to speed the softening of your butter ingredient without the risk of melting it too quickly or messily.

When heating butter in this way, it should take only 5-10 minutes to soften butter if your water is hot enough. Super quick and easy to tackle while you prepare and pre-measure other ingredients!

How To Test When Butter Is Properly Softened

The quickest and most accurate method is to insert the probe of an instant-read thermometer into the stick of butter. You are looking for the temperature of the butter to be between 68F and 72F if the recipe calls for room temperature butter. This also works with cubed butter if you have cut the butter into small chunks. Another reliable method is to poke your finger onto the butter's surface. It should leave an indent but not stick to your finger.

How to Quickly Soften Butter

Softening butter is all about preparation, surface area, and heat! Leave your pre-measured butter out at room temperature if you have time to plan. If you don’t, give one of our microwave or water submersion methods a try if you are looking for quick ways to soften butter!

You’re ready to tackle some of our most delicious recipes here at SerenaLissy.com. Enjoy our Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies and Homemade Girl Scout Cookie Samoas today.

More Tips To Make You A Better Baker

How To Choose The Right Pie Pan

Flour 101

The Function of Sugar in Baking

Looking For More Baking Tips?

Subscribe to my free newsletter to get new baking tips in your inbox monthly. Find me sharing new recipes and tips on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook.

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases. What that means is if you click on one of our affiliate links, they may toss a few pennies our way for a commission.

Cake has been an age-old dessert, from simple sheet cakes to extravagant wedding and party cakes. But cupcakes were supposedly first invented in America, with Amelia Simmons’ “American Cookery” cookbook in 1796. The cookbook is also believed to be the first cookbook written by an American published in the United States.

Back then, cupcakes were referred to as cakes baked in small cups, and today they are scrumptious delicacies with the satisfying taste of cake in a more manageable and adorable size. Today, we’re exploring just how to best store and freeze cupcakes. Of course, frosting a cupcake straight out of the oven leads to a melted frosting disaster, but sometimes we don’t have the time to bake, wait and frost.

Storing homemade cupcakes for icing and eating later is essential for any cupcake lover. Let’s get started!

Storing Undecorated Cupcakes

There’s a reason behind letting foods cool before storing! When stored in an airtight container, warm and hot food releases steam that can condensate on the food’s surface. For cupcakes, this can result in sticky cupcake tops with excess moisture and cupcake sides that don’t cleanly separate from their cupcake liners.

Let your unfrosted hot cupcakes cool completely before frosting or storing them for later. Letting them cool on a cooling wire rack instead of on the baking tray can prevent overbaking and soggy bottoms.

When choosing how to store your cupcakes, a standard plastic air-tight container is a great option to balance maintaining freshness with an airlock and preventing stickiness that can occur with plastic wrap.

Choose a plastic storage container that is tall enough for your cupcakes to stand upright. You also want to place cupcakes in a single layer in the container for best results. Bonus points if it’s tall enough to hold frosted cupcakes, which we’ll get to in a moment! Finally, store your unfrosted cupcakes at room temperature in a dry place, on a counter, or in an extra cabinet. They will have a shelf life of about a week.

How to Freeze Unfrosted Cupcakes

When freezing unfrosted cupcakes, it’s arguably even more important to ensure that your cupcakes have cooled down before you begin. If you aren't careful, condensation that forms on your cupcakes will turn into ice in the freezer. Once those cupcakes are defrosted, you’ll be in for a soggy mess.

Instead, let your cupcakes cool completely, then wrap them in plastic wrap individually. You can place the cupcakes in their plastic wrap in the freezer or place them in a larger plastic freezer bag or container for more security. Keep in mind that placing them in a container can protect your cupcakes from becoming squished as you inevitably place more things in the freezer before unfreezing all of the batch.

While saran wrap isn’t recommended for cupcake storage at room temperature, it’s a great choice when freezing cupcakes since the lower temperature won’t cause sticky tops and helps prevent freezer burn. However, when you’re ready to unfreeze your baked goods, be sure to peel back the plastic wrap, especially from your cupcake tops, before they hit room temperature.

Plenty of times, I've committed to bringing dessert but then end up with a busy schedule and no time to bake. I love being able to freeze a bunch of cupcakes then pull them out a couple of days before the day of the event. This is such an easy way to help manage your schedule.

Storing Frosted Cupcakes

Storing frosted cupcakes isn’t too different from storing unfrosted cupcakes, but you might need a taller plastic container! You wouldn’t want all of your hard work to go to waste because of a plastic top crushing them all in one go.

As a general rule of thumb, about 3 inches tall should accommodate most designs, and depending on how much room you have in the container, and you can even opt to pipe frosting onto the cupcakes right in the container.

Store this container at room temperature on a counter just like unfrosted cupcakes, and eat within a few days up to a week for optimal freshness! I also like to use a cake carrier for this. It holds a lot and is usually tall enough to cause no damage to the cupcakes. And the carrier is easy to grab and go when you need them for a special occasion.

How to Freeze Frosted Cupcakes

Perhaps the question of the day is, how can you even attempt to freeze frosted cupcakes? Keeping the frosting away from anything else in your freezer and still maintaining the beautiful flow of cupcake frosting…is it even possible?

Of course, it is with a bit of prep and maybe a little extra freezer space! Remember that it will take a bit longer to freeze frosted cupcakes compared to unfrosted cupcakes or even cookies and batter. First, let your cupcakes cool as usual.

Next, frost with your favorite frosting, and then freeze these frosted cupcakes individually, with no wrapping. This will ensure that your frosting has a chance to maintain its shape in the freezing process and not smush into other freezer goodies.

Finally, wrap all frozen cupcakes as you would an unfrosted one with plastic wrap, then freeze individually or in a plastic container. When defrosting, remove the plastic wrap immediately, then let thaw to room temperature. Delicious!

Can I Store My Cupcakes In The Refrigerator?

We’ve learned how to best store and freeze both unfrosted and frosted cupcakes. But why is storing your cupcakes in the fridge a bad idea? Is it really better to store them in a container at room temperature?

Refrigerating your cupcakes is a quick way to dry them out. The sugar content in your cupcake will quickly crystallize and harden, resulting in crumbly cupcakes, and not in a good way. Instead of a satisfying cakey bite, you'll be met with a hard edge and a mess of crumbs.

Of course, there are exceptions to most rules. If your cupcakes contain fillings or frosting made from dairy products, you’ll need to store them in a fridge to prevent spoilage. You can also store fresh cupcakes in a fridge for a short period of time before serving to preserve cupcake frosting that might melt otherwise before an outdoor event.

So Can You Freeze Cupcakes?

Definitely yes, but I'd recommend freezing your cupcakes for no longer than three months.

Cupcake baking can seem like the simpler version of regular cakes. But any seasoned baker will tell you that cupcakes can take just as much time, and sometimes more time, than a cake! In addition, every small cupcake needs delicate care, decoration, and protection from other food things that could get them crushed.

Now you can streamline your cupcake-making techniques and treat yourself to more cupcakes without the stress. Ready to read more about baking techniques, storage, and recipes on SerenaLissy.com? Check out our article on Top 10 Baking Tips for the Perfect Cake and try our Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes recipe today.

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