You May Be Able To Save Flat Cookies With One Easy Step

It's easy to get impatient when it comes to baking cookies. As soon as you put a batch in the oven, your whole kitchen fills with the aroma of vanilla and sugar, and even if you set a timer, it's hard not to keep looking through the oven door to see when they'll finally be done. When you do this, there's nothing quite as disappointing as finding that the dough is spreading out a bit too much. If you want to save your cookies from this unfortunate, flat fate, there's actually one thing you can do — but you have to act fast, as it only works while the cookies are still soft.

According to MyRecipes, you'll first need to pull the cookies out of the oven. Then, grab a spoon or butter knife and push the edges of each cookie toward the center so the diameter is slightly smaller. Once you're satisfied with the new look, you can go ahead and return the cookies to the oven and allow them resume baking. Ideally, instead of flat cookies, you'll end up with treats that have a bit more bulk.

While a spoon or butter knife is a very accessible tool to rescue cookies on the verge of flatness, one viral TikTok perfect cookie hack makes the job a lot easier with a round cookie cutter. In the now widely replicated video, creator @cloudykitchen uses a circular cutter to "scoot" the edges of their cookies into a rounder, taller, and more uniform shape. They appear to have done this with cookies straight out of the oven, but those who are curious to try the trick can do so at any stage of the baking process. As The Kitchn states, it works as long as the dough is still "soft and pliable."

If you're using a cookie cutter instead of a spoon or butter knife, just make sure not to use one that's too big, as The Kitchn says this could result in a misshapen cookie. Now, go forth and bake with confidence knowing that you can fix any flat cookies with a common kitchen object and a little bit of patience.