Cookie Dough Too Dry: How to Fix Crumbly Cookie Dough

Is your chocolate chip, shortbread, or sugar cookie dough too dry? Whether you incorrectly measured dry ingredients or your cookie dough dried out in the fridge, this post can help! If you're wondering how do you add moisture to dry cookie dough, below I list a few different ways, show you how to fix crumbly cookie dough, and what to do with dry cookies! And for more baking tips, check out Browned Butter 101, How to Make Vanilla Extract with 2 Ingredients, and Measuring Baking Ingredients Accurately for Better Results! And once you've learned these tips, check out my list of the Best Cookies for a Cookie Exchange!

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Common Reason for Dry Cookie Dough #1: Too Much Flour

If you've found a cookie dough recipe you love but can't achieve perfect cookies, the issue may be how you're measuring your flour. A cup of flour measured with a measuring cup can actually contain varying amounts of flour, leading to a cookie that's too dry. I recommend using a kitchen scale to measure your all-purpose flour to make sure you're adding the correct amount and achieve best results. The kitchen scale I use is under $10 and very reliable! For more tips, check out my post on measuring baking ingredients accurately!

Common Reason for Dry Dough #2: Wet Ingredients Not At Room Temperature

When adding in your melted butter, brown sugar, white sugar, or eggs, or any extra ingredients that add liquid to your homemade cookies, make sure that you've allowed them to come to room temperature. The only exception to this is if you're using a shortbread cookie dough that calls for cold butter. Otherwise, your butter should be soft, and eggs no longer cool to the touch.

Common Problem with Crumbly Dough #3: Not Enough Fat or Enough Liquid

Be sure to use the full amount of butter, oil, milk, or eggs that the recipe calls for. Also, be sure to use large eggs if the recipe calls for it -- smaller eggs contain less liquid.

Reason for Dry Cookie Dough #4: Overmixing

This can easily happen if you're using an electric mixer. Combining flour with water or other liquids activates the gluten. So the more you mix the two together, the tougher the gluten will be, leading to a drier cookie. When mixing your dough, I would suggest to only mix as much as needed to bring the dough together -- or you can use an electric mixer for most of the mixing and then switch to a dough whisk to mix it the rest of the way. That way you avoid mixing too long!

Cookie Dough Dried Out in Fridge

Another source of frustration with cookie dough that's too dry is when it dries out on its own in the fridge. The interior of refrigerators are constantly circulating air to maintain cool temperatures. So any uncovered dough is likely to dry out. To prevent this, be sure to always cover your dough tightly with plastic wrap if you plan to store it in the fridge for more than an hour.

What do you do if your cookie dough is too dry? How do you make crumbly dough stick together?

How do you add moisture to a dry cookie? There are a few different ways to fix dry, crumbly cookie dough:

• Add vegetable oil or melted butter to combat a lack of fat. If your recipe doesn't use much fat, you may end up with crumbly dough. To fix this, add in a bit more fat a teaspoon at a time, and mix after each addition. This is a great option if you have shortbread cookie dough that's too dry.
• Add more liquid ingredients in small amounts. Milk, egg yolks or egg whites, vanilla extract or even a teaspoon of water can help moisten the dough to give you less crumbly cookies. A little bit of a liquid like milk can also help your cookies spread in the oven to give you a more crispy cookie. This is a technique I might use if my sugar cookie dough is too dry.
• Let the dough rest so that the gluten can soften. Place plastic wrap on top of the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for up to an hour. This is a great way to allow the gluten to relax. It will also let the ingredients absorb into each other better, leading to much softer dough and the best cookies!

Be Careful Not to Overbake Cookies

Even if you don't start out with dry, crumbly cookie dough, you can still end up with hard, dry cookies if you bake them too long. Be sure to take cookies out once the edges are golden brown (or as the recipe directs), but they may still be soft and appear underbaked. Cookies often continue to set as they cool, so that they end up with the soft and chewy texture you want, like with my Crumbl Sugar Cookies Recipe! If you make sure to follow the recipe instructions and confirm that your oven temperature is accurate with an oven thermometer, you should be able to remove your cookies from the oven even a minute or two early so that they don't overbake.

How to Fix Dry Cookies

So how do you add moisture to a dry cookie? To soften baked cookies that are too dry, you can add a slice of bread to the airtight container where you're storing the cookies. The moisture from the bread will give the cookies a softer texture. Or you can just pop the cookies in the microwave for 4-5 seconds until their texture softens a bit.

What to Do with Dry Cookies

If you've already baked your cookies and they came out dry and crumbly, you have options! You can crush them into crumbs and make a cookie crust for cheesecake, or as a crispy layer in a no bake dessert like these Halloween Dirt Cups! Mix chunks of them into a no-churn ice cream recipe, or crumble them as a crunchy topping on cakes, cookies, or brownies!

Favorite Cookie Recipes to Try

The best way to avoid dry, tough cookies is to use an original recipe with enough moisture in the dough in the first place! Here are a few of my favorites for delicious cookies in your next batch:

• Raspberry White Chocolate Cookies
• Coconut Macadamia Oatmeal Cookies with White Chocolate Chunks
• Peanut Butter and Jelly Thumbprint Cookies
• Snickerdoodle Recipe without Cream of Tartar

Last Updated on December 14, 2022 by Chenée Lewis