A cookie is a sweet biscuit with high sugar and fat content. Cookie dough is softer than that used for other types of biscuit, and they are cooked longer at lower temperatures. The dough typically contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of Cooking oil or fat. It may include other ingredients such as , , , or nuts. Cookie texture varies from crisp and crunchy to soft and chewy, depending on the exact combination of ingredients and methods used to create them.
People in the United States and Canada typically refer to all sweet biscuits as "cookies". People in most other English-speaking countries call crunchy cookies "biscuits" but may use the term "cookies" for chewier biscuits and for certain types, such as chocolate-chip cookies.
Cookies are often served with Drink such as milk, coffee, or tea and sometimes dunked, which releases more Flavoring by dissolving the sugars,[Lee, Laura. The Pocket Encyclopedia of Aggravation. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2001.] while also softening their texture. Factory-made cookies are sold in , convenience stores, and . Fresh-baked cookies are sold at bakery and .
Terminology
In many English-speaking countries outside
North America, including the United Kingdom, the most common word for a crisp cookie is "
biscuit".
Where biscuit is the most common term, "cookie" often only refers to one type of biscuit, a chocolate chip cookie.
However, in some regions both terms are used. The container used to store cookies may be called a
cookie jar.
In Scotland, the term "cookie" is sometimes used to describe a plain bun.
Cookies that are baked as a solid layer on a sheet pan and then cut, rather than being baked as individual pieces, are called bar cookies in American English or traybakes in British English.
Etymology
The word
cookie dates from at least 1701 in Scottish usage where the word meant "plain bun", rather than thin baked good, and so it is not certain whether it is the same word. From 1808, the word "cookie" is attested "...in the sense of "small, flat, sweet cake" in
American English. The American use is derived from
Dutch language koekje "little cake", which is a diminutive of "koek" ("cake"), which came from the
Middle Dutch word "koke"
with an informal, dialect variant koekie.
According to the Scottish National Dictionary, its Scottish name may derive from the
diminutive form (+ suffix
-ie) of the word
cook, giving the
Middle Scots cookie,
cooky or
cu(c)kie.
There was much trade and cultural contact across the
North Sea between the
Low Countries and Scotland during the
Middle Ages, which can also be seen in the history of curling and, perhaps, golf.
Description
Cookies are most commonly baked until crisp or else for just long enough to ensure a soft interior. Other types of cookies are not baked at all, such as varieties of
peanut butter cookies that use solidified
chocolate rather than set eggs and wheat gluten as a binder.
Cookies are produced in a wide variety of styles, using an array of ingredients including sugars,
, chocolate,
butter, peanut butter, nuts, or dried
.
A general theory of cookies may be formulated in the following way. Despite its descent from cakes and other sweetened breads, the cookie in almost all its forms has abandoned water as a medium for cohesion. Water in cakes serves to make the batter as thin as possible, the better to allow bubbles—responsible for a cake's fluffiness—to form. In the cookie the agent of cohesion has become some form of oil. Oils, whether in the form of butter, vegetable oils, or lard, are much more viscous than water and evaporate freely at a far higher temperature. Thus a cake made with butter or eggs in place of water is much denser after removal from the oven.
Rather than evaporating as water does in a baking cake, oils in cookies remain. These oils saturate the cavities created during baking by bubbles of escaping gases. These gases are primarily composed of steam vaporized from the egg whites and the carbon dioxide released by heating the baking powder. This saturation produces the most texturally attractive feature of the cookie, and indeed all fried foods: crispness saturated with a moisture (namely oil) that does not render soggy the food it has soaked into.
History
Cookie-like hard wafers have existed for as long as baking has been documented, in part because they survive travel very well, but they were usually not sweet enough to be considered cookies by modern standards.
Cookies appear to have their origins in 7th century AD Persia, shortly after the use of sugar became relatively common in the region.
With global travel becoming widespread at that time, cookies made a natural travel companion, a modernized equivalent of the travel cakes used throughout history. One of the most popular early cookies, which traveled especially well and became known on every continent by similar names, was the jumble, a relatively hard cookie made largely from nuts, sweetener, and water.
Cookies came to America through the Dutch in New Amsterdam in the late 1620s. The Dutch language word "koekje" was Anglicized to "cookie" or cooky. The earliest reference to cookies in America is in 1703, when "The Dutch in New York provided...'in 1703...at a funeral 800 cookies...
The modern form of cookies, which is based on creaming butter and sugar together, did not appear commonly until the 18th century.
Classification
Cookies are broadly classified according to how they are formed or made, including at least these categories:
-
Bar cookies consist of batter or other ingredients that are poured or pressed into a pan (sometimes in multiple layers) and cut into cookie-sized pieces after baking. In British English, bar cookies are known as "tray bakes".
-
Drop cookies are made from a relatively soft dough that is dropped by spoonfuls onto the baking sheet. During baking, the mounds of dough spread and flatten. Chocolate chip cookies (Toll House cookies), oatmeal raisin (or other oatmeal-based) cookies, and are popular examples of drop cookies. This may also include thumbprint cookies, for which a small central depression is created with a thumb or small spoon before baking to contain a filling, such as jam or a chocolate chip.
-
Filled cookies are made from a rolled cookie dough filled with a fruit, jam or confectionery filling before baking. are a filled cookie.
-
Molded cookies are also made from a stiffer dough that is molded into balls or cookie shapes by hand before baking. and peanut butter cookies are examples of molded cookies. Some cookies, such as hermits or biscotti, are molded into large flattened loaves that are later cut into smaller cookies.
-
No-bake cookies are made by mixing a filler, such as cereal or nuts, into a melted confectionery binder, shaping into cookies or bars, and allowing to cool or harden. Oatmeal clusters and are no-bake cookies.
-
Pressed cookies are made from a soft dough that is extruded from a cookie press into various decorative shapes before baking. Spritzgebäck is an example of a pressed cookie.
-
Refrigerator cookies (also known as icebox cookies) are made from a stiff dough that is refrigerated to make the raw dough even stiffer before cutting and baking. The dough is typically shaped into cylinders which are sliced into round cookies before baking. Pinwheel cookies and those made by Pillsbury are representative.
-
Rolled cookies are made from a stiffer dough that is rolled out and cut into shapes with a cookie cutter. Gingerbread man are an example.
-
Cookie sandwich are rolled or pressed cookies that are assembled as a sandwich with a sweet filling. Fillings include marshmallow, jam, and icing. The Oreo cookie, made of two chocolate cookies with a vanilla icing filling, is an example.
Other types of cookies are classified for other reasons, such as their ingredients, size, or intended time of serving:
-
Breakfast cookies are typically larger, lower-sugar cookies filled with "heart-healthy nuts and fiber-rich oats" that are eaten as a quick breakfast snack.
-
Low-fat cookies or diet cookies typically have lower fat than regular cookies.
[Insel, Paul; Ross, Don; McMahon, Kimberley; Bernstein, Melissa. Nutrition. Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2016 p. 335]
-
Raw cookie dough is served in some restaurants, though the eggs may be omitted since the dough is eaten raw, which could pose a salmonella risk if eggs were used. Cookie Dough Confections in New York City is a restaurant that has a range of raw cookie dough flavors, which are scooped into cups for customers like ice cream.
-
Skillet cookies are big cookies that are cooked in a cast-iron skillet and served warm, while they are still soft and chewy. They are either eaten straight from the pan or cut into wedges, often with vanilla ice cream on top.
-
Supersized cookies are large cookies such as the Panera Kitchen Sink Cookie.
-
Vegan cookies can be made with flour, sugar, nondairy milk, and nondairy margarine. Aquafaba icing can be used to decorate the cookies.
-
Cookie cakes are made in a larger circular shape usually with writing made of frosting.
Reception
Leah Ettman from Nutrition Action has criticized the high-calorie count and fat content of supersized cookies, which are extra large cookies; she cites the Panera Kitchen Sink Cookie, a supersized chocolate chip cookie, which measures inches in diameter and has 800 calories.
For busy people who eat breakfast cookies in the morning, Kate Bratskeir from the
Huffington Post recommends lower-sugar cookies filled with "heart-healthy nuts and fiber-rich oats".
A book on nutrition by Paul Insel et al. notes that "low-fat" or "diet cookies" may have the same number of calories as regular cookies, due to
added sugar.
In popular culture
There are a number of slang usages of the term "cookie". The slang use of "cookie" to mean a person, "especially an attractive woman" is attested to in print since 1920.
The catchphrase "that's the way the cookie crumbles", which means "that's just the way things happen" is attested to in print in 1955.
Other slang terms include "smart cookie" and "tough cookie." According to
The Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms, a smart cookie is "someone who is clever and good at dealing with difficult situations."
The word "cookie" has been vulgar slang for "vagina" in the US since 1970.
[Partridge, Eric. The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English. Taylor & Francis, 2009. p. 229.] The word "cookies" is used to refer to the contents of the stomach, often in reference to vomiting (e.g., "pop your cookies", a 1960s expression, or "toss your cookies", a 1970s expression).
The expression "cookie cutter", in addition to referring literally to a culinary device used to cut
Rolling pin cookie dough into shapes, is also used metaphorically to refer to items or things "having the same configuration or look as many others" (e.g., a "cookie cutter
tract house") or to label something as "stereotyped or formulaic" (e.g., an action movie filled with "generic cookie cutter characters").
"Cookie duster" is a whimsical expression for a
mustache.
Cookie Monster is a The Muppets on the children's television show Sesame Street. He is best known for his voracious appetite for cookies and his famous eating phrases, such as "Me want cookie!", "Me eat cookie!" (or simply "COOKIE!"), and "Om nom nom nom" (said through a mouth full of food).
Cookie Clicker is a game where players click a cookie to buy upgrades to make more cookies.
Notable varieties
Gallery
File:Maple spice cookies and thumbprint cookies.jpg|A variety of Maple spice cookies and thumbprint cookies
File:Cookie Cake.JPG|A cookie cake is a large cookie that can be decorated with icing or fondant like a cake. This is made by Mrs. Fields.
File:Heart shaped cookies.jpg|Hearts shaped Valentine's Day cookies adorned with icing
File:McVitie's chocolate digestive biscuit.jpg|A McVitie's chocolate digestive, a popular biscuit to dunk in tea/coffee in the United Kingdom
File:Fortune cookie.png|A fortune cookie
File:Meringue cookies.jpg|Meringue cookies
File:Oreo-Two-Cookies.jpg|Commercially sold Oreo cookies
File:Cookie stack.jpg|Choc-chip cookies
File:Cookies being sold.jpg|A cookie shop, filled with a wide range of cookies
File:CookieCuttersAl.jpg|Cookie cutters
File:Chef's Cookie Deep Dish - 27682832174.jpg|A cookie dessert, topped with ice cream
File:Chocolate chip cookies.jpg|A plate of chocolate chip cookies
File:Algerian_cookies.jpg|Algerian cookies
File:Little heart-shaped cookies in West Bengal, India.jpg|Little heart-shaped cookies from India
Related pastries and confections
Manufacturers
Product lines and brands
Miscellaneous
See also
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List of baked goods
-
List of cookies
-
List of shortbread biscuits and cookies
-
List of desserts
Further reading
External links
