The birth of the cookie came to be when small amounts of cake batter were dropped onto baking pans to test the temperature of ovens before a large cake was baked. Cookies were originally called little cakes due to their size and for the fact they could be eaten from a hand rather than a plate or saucer.
The Dutch were the first who made the cookie popular in the United States. Since the time the cookie was introduced to the population of the United States, an innkeeper by the name of Ruth Wakefield ran out of nuts while preparing a batch of cookies. She substituted chocolate that she had in a form of a bar for the nuts that she had cut into pieces. Ruth had created the chocolate chip cookie with her substitution.
There are actually six styles of cookies that are being used when baking cookies and they are as follows:
Drop Cookies – Drop cookies are made by dropping spoonfuls of cookie dough onto baking sheets. The most common drop cookies are chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, macaroons, and no bake cookies.
Bar Cookies – Bar cookies are made by pouring the cookie batter into an oblong baking sheet and cutting into bars after baked. The common types of bar cookies are almond chocolate bars, brownies, blondies, and lemon bars. The bar cookie batter is thicker than a normal cake batter and is baked similarly to cakes.
Hand Formed or Molded Cookies – These types of cookies are made by shaping the cookies into certain shapes before baking. For instance, these types of cookies need to be formed into a log before cutting, small balls or crescents. Cookies that fall into this category are sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, decorated cookies such as Christmas bells that require to be cut out with a cookie cutter.
Pressed Cookies – These types of cookies are formed by pressing the dough through a cookie press machine or through a pastry bag to form fancier shaped cookies or designs. Cookies that are made in this fashion are: spritzs.
Refrigerator Cookies – Refrigerator cookies are cookies that are required to be formed into a log, as mention under hand formed cookies, that need to be refrigerated for a certain amount of time before cooking. This type of dough can be kept in the refrigerator up to one week after being made. The types of cookies that can be made with this type of preparation are: klutchens, shortbread cookies, and pinwheels. While these specific types are the favorites, there are many other types of cookies that you can make with the refrigerated cookies.
Other Category Cookies – There are the cookies that fall into a category of their own. These cookies are tea cakes and filled cookies, but not limited to these two types. These cookies are prepared similarly to the other types of cookies, but have some different requirements. For instance tea cakes, also known as biscotties, are prepared with fruit added to the batter before baking. Filled cookies will have the filling added before or after baking depending on the cookie.
