Beat Cookies With A Meat Mallet For Fun, Crispy Crevices

Anyone who likes homemade cookies with added texture probably loves using cookie presses to elevate their batch. But there's an easier way to give cookies a texture that doesn't require a cookie press (per Epicurious).

If you don't own a cookie press but are tired of the same flat cookies every time you bake, you can give your sweet treats a beautiful, crispy look and feel without one. It does require another kitchen utensil, but thankfully, it's one that you might be more likely to own, especially if you eat meat. Even if you're vegetarian or plant-based, it might be worth stocking up on one of these gadgets for the next time you bake cookies, and you can also use it to chop ingredients (per Martha Stewart). Your cookies will have crevices evenly spread throughout, which is a fun way to make them taste even better. And the process that makes them so tasty? Yup, it's a lot of fun too.

There are plenty of ways to add texture to your cookies, including using a cookie press or taking a fork to the tops of your balls of cookie dough, but one unexpected method will level up your cookie game. All you need to do is grab a meat mallet and give your cookie dough some good whacks after you separate them into individual cookie portions (per Epicurious).

When you break out a meat mallet to flatten meat for cooking, you may not think it would be helpful in baking. The good news is that if you like baking cookies with a lot of texture, it's the perfect way to add some for an improved mouthfeel. Those spikes on a meat mallet are spaced far enough apart that hammering down your cookie dough will create a variety of thicknesses in a fun pattern that will tantalize your taste buds. Bonus: if life happens to be extra frustrating the day you choose to bake cookies, you can use a meat mallet to take all those feelings out on the cookie dough too.

Using a meat mallet can add a lovely, aesthetically pleasing texture to your cookies, but it's far from the only way to change up how your favorite cookie recipes feel in your mouth. Some strategies work better for certain types of cookies than others, but they're certainly worth a shot if you prefer the texture.

Some texture-related strategies depend on how you bake or frost the cookies. To get a cookie with a rougher-feeling top, add baking soda. Adding baking soda to a cookie recipe reacts with acidic ingredients (like brown sugar) to create little pockets of gas throughout the cookie. If you prefer a frosted cookie and regularly use royal icing, there are different ways to add texture. You can flood your cookies with royal icing and then press bubble wrap into and around the flooded cookies to create a circular pattern. Alternatively, suppose you prefer a textured cookie with fewer holes. In that case, you can crinkle up a square of parchment paper, open it up, and wrap it around each cookie for a tissue paper-like texture effect (per A Beautiful Mess). A meat mallet will give you the fun, textured cookies you crave, but it's far from the only way to take your cookies' texture to the next level.