Baking trials: How do cookie scoop sizes affect your cookies?

You used all the right ingredients, your oven is perfectly calibrated, and you baked your cookies for the exact amount of time the recipe directed. But their texture is all wrong. What happened? 

Portion size affects cookie texture  

Chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, oatmeal cookies, gingersnaps — all of these (and so many more) are drop cookies, so-called because they’re shaped by dropping mounds of dough onto a baking sheet.  

The size of cookie dough balls may not seem overly critical, but it actually has a prominent effect on the final cookies. Scooping larger or smaller rounds of dough than the recipe writer intended won’t just alter the size of the cookies: It can also impact their thickness, texture, and appearance. 

This is why recipe developers often include precise directions for measuring cookie dough balls. Take, for example, our 2024 Recipe of the Year, Supersized, Super-Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies, which include precise gram amounts for each ball of cookie dough (85g to 90g!) to achieve their namesake size and texture. Sometimes, instead of a precise measurement, your recipe may call for a “rounded tablespoonful” of dough or “a ball the size of a walnut.”

Photography by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne

If you follow a cookie recipe and the texture is off, chances are the size of each cookie isn’t quite what the recipe writer had in mind. Too little dough, and the cookies can be overbaked: brown, hard, and dry. Too large a scoop can yield pale, underbaked cookies with soft edges and a doughy interior. And if the dough balls are inconsistently sized (some larger, some smaller), you can end up with cookies that are both underbaked and overbaked — all on the same pan! 

What’s the best way to scoop the exact portion of dough necessary to yield cookies with the perfect texture, whether the recipe says they’ll be soft and chewy, crispy-crunchy, or something in between? 

Cookie scoops to the rescue 

Cookie scoops (think downsized ice-cream scoops) have been a must-have in the King Arthur Test Kitchen for nearly three decades. They make scooping cookie dough super-fast, easy, clean, and consistent. Just as important, though, they make it simple to convey to readers exactly how large each portion of dough should be to ensure the resulting cookies have the correct texture. 

PJ Hamel

PJ Hamel

Here are the four cookie scoop sizes you’ll find yourself using over and over again: 

• 1 teaspoon (makes a 1 1/2" cookie)
• 1 tablespoon (makes a 2" cookie)
• 2 tablespoons (makes a 3" cookie)
• 4 tablespoons (makes a 4" cookie)

I put these scoops to the test using our Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe, which suggests using a tablespoon cookie scoop. Scooping one gently rounded ball of dough using each of the four different scoops, I baked all of the cookies on the same baking sheet. This ensured consistency in everything except the test: scoop size. The resulting cookies?

• 1 teaspoon scoop: dry, hard, over-browned  
• 1 tablespoon scoop: crunchy edges, softer center  
• 2 tablespoon scoop: crunchy at the very edge, but largely soft throughout
• 4 tablespoon scoop: soft edges, unbaked center

Using the 1 tablespoon scoop produced my favorite result — just what the recipe writer (me!) intended. 

PJ Hamel

How to choose — and use — the right cookie scoop 

If your recipe specifies simply a “teaspoon” or “level teaspoon” (or tablespoon, or 2 tablespoon) scoop, use the appropriate scoop to portion out the dough and then, before depositing it onto the baking sheet, level it off with a table knife (or bowl scraper). 

But if the recipe says gently rounded, rounded, generous … what do those terms mean? They’re actually a scoop progression, as follows:

• Gently rounded: Dough is slightly rounded across the top of the scoop
• Rounded: Dough forms a round ball in the scoop
• Generous: Dough is overflowing the scoop  

And if the recipe doesn’t offer any clue at all as to portion size? No problem. So long as the recipe gives a yield (“Makes 2 dozen cookies”), you can work backwards to determine scoop size. Here’s how:  

1. Before you start, note the weight of your mixing bowl.
2. When the dough is ready, weigh both dough and bowl, then subtract the weight of the bowl; this is the weight of your dough.
3. Divide the weight of dough by the “yield” — the number of cookies the recipe makes. (If the recipe isn’t specific — e.g., “makes 24 to 28 cookies” — just choose something midway.) The resulting number is the desired weight for each dough ball.
4. Portion out one ball by weight, then choose the cookie scoop that fits it best. 

To really nail your ideal cookies, do a small test bake 

Still not sure? Before scooping out all your dough, do a small test bake using different portions of dough — it will allow you to see which amount yields cookies with the desired texture. 

PJ Hamel

A test bake is also important when you’re unsure how much your cookies will spread as they bake; or when baking super-large (palm-sized or bigger) cookies using a larger scoop, as nailing the bake time for oversized cookies can sometimes be tricky. See Why I always bake a few test cookies first for details. 

In summary: Scoops are the key to consistent cookies 

When making drop cookies, the portion of dough you scoop for each cookie is critical to its final texture. Using the right-size cookie scoop for the recipe ensures you’ll scoop the correct amount of dough, and that you’ll do so consistently for the entire batch. The result? Perfect cookies every time! 

Want more tips and tricks for baking cookies, drop or otherwise? See our guide on How to Bake Cookies.

Cover photo by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Sheila Jarnes.

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