Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies (High Altitude) Recipe - Food.com (2024)

FAQs

What is considered high altitude when baking cookies? ›

The challenges of high altitude cooking and baking can be discouraging to say the least. Too often high altitude baking is more frustrating than fun. Most sea-level recipes work up to around 3,000 feet, but above that, you start to see problems. Flat cookies, collapsed cakes, and sunken muffins.

If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. Therefore, as the butter spreads so does the whole liquidy cookie.

Company Announcement. ARLINGTON, VA., August 10, 2023 — Nestlé USA is initiating a voluntary recall of a limited quantity of NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough “break and bake” Bar (16.5 oz) products due to the potential presence of wood fragments.

Q: Why are my cookies so puffy and cakey? Whipping too much air into the dough. That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. So don't overdo it when you're creaming together the butter and sugar.

From 5,000 feet to 7,000 feet, baking is often improved by raising the oven temperature 15°F to 25°F, because the higher temperature quickly sets the batter's cell structure. Between 7,000 feet and 9,000 feet, raising the temperature can sometimes cause over-crusting on the surface of baked goods.

Reduce the leavening in the cookie recipe by about 25% if you live between 3,000-7,000 ft above sea level, and by about 30% if you're higher up in altitude. This helps the cookies spread less as they bake- leavening agents can work a bit differently at high-altitude!

Your butter or dough wasn't cold enough

Butter keeps cookies fluffy in two ways. First, creaming cold butter with sugar creates tiny, uniform air pockets that will remain in the dough it bakes up. Second, cold butter naturally takes a longer time to melt in the oven.

Let the finished cookies sit on the cookie sheet for a few minutes prior to transferring to a wire rack. And remember that cooking times are an approximation—when cookies are golden brown around the edges, they should be ready.

On June 22, the Marler Clark law firm filed the first E. coli lawsuit against Nestle USA in connection with the Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough E. coli outbreak on behalf of a young California woman.

Why was Nestle Toll House recalled? ›

Nestle Toll House is voluntarily recalling two batches of its cookie dough because they may have wood pieces in them. The recall involves Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough “break and bake” bars that were produced on April 24 and 25, 2023, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The dough contains margarine and fats in the formulation; therefore, it is important that your dough is well chilled (or frozen) prior to baking.

Too much butter makes cookies turn out just as you'd expect: very buttery. This batch of cookies was cakey in the middle, but also airy throughout, with crispy edges. They were yellow and slightly puffy in the middle, and brown and super thin around the perimeter.

At 5,000 feet elevation, the air pressure is even lower, and you'll notice the increased rate of evaporation in this drier climate. To adjust for high altitude baking at this elevation, consider the following suggestions: Raise oven temperature by 25 degrees Fahrenheit.

High altitude = 1500 to 3500 meters above sea level (4900-11500 ft.) Very high altitude = 3500 to 5500 meters above sea level (11500 to 18000 ft.) Extreme altitude = above 5500 meters above sea level (18000 ft.)

Increase baking temperature by 15 to 25 °F to help “set” the batter before cells formed by the leavening gas expand too much. Note that baking time may be reduced so check during baking. Excessive evaporation of water at high elevation leads to high concentration of sugar, which weakens the cell structure.