Different Types of Cookies: How to Classify Cookies (2024)

Here are 10 types of cookies, showing how to classifycookies according to the ways they are baked.

Bar Cookies

Somewhere in between a cookie and a cake, bar cookies are someof the quickest and easiest cookies to make. Dough and other ingredients thatare poured or pressed into the pan with sides (instead of on a baking sheet),sometimes in multiple layers. After baking and cooling, they are cut intoshapes such as squares, rectangles, triangles, or diamonds.

Drop Cookies

Drop cookies, as the name suggests, are baked by dropping orpushing spoonfuls of cookie dough onto the baking sheet. During baking, themounds of dough flatten and spread.

Filled Cookies

Filled cookies are made from cookie dough stuffed with afruit or confectionery contents before baking. Some are like a tiny pocket orpouch, prepared similarly to dumplings, in which the dough is encased aroundthe filling and edges are crimped. Others are prepared as tiny tarts inminiature muffin tins. Filled cookies have become favorites because theycombine a standard cookie (the dough) with a special filling, offering twotreats in one.

Fried Cookies

Fried cookies, growing in popularity, are drop cookies orfilled cookies that are cooked in oil. Sometimes referred to as simply “frieddough,” these types of cookies they are often dusted with powdered sugar after beingcooked. They are best when served immediately. In addition to traditional friedcookies, today’s favorite cookie recipes (like chocolate chip cookie dough oroatmeal cookie dough) are modified by adding a bit of liquid, rolling the doughin batter, and deep frying the dough to create a rich and crispy treat.

Molded Cookies

Molded cookies, made from stiff dough, are formed intoshapes before baking. Cookies are shaped by hand or in a mold. Cookies can behand-shaped into wreaths, crescents, canes, logs, and balls. Some are moldedinto large flattened loaves and later cut into smaller cookies. Molded cookiescan also be created by using cookie molds, mold pans, cookie stamps, or aspecialty rolling pin (Springerle rolling pin) – each created with designs tobe pressed into the dough.

No-Bake Cookies

While technically not a cookie category in their own right,no-bake cookies are hybrid between a candy and a cookie. They are made bymixing a filler (such as cereal or nuts) into a sticky binder. The cookies areshaped into individual treats or pressed into a pan and cut as bars, and thencooled to harden. No-bake cookies are unique among types of cookies in that they do not require bakingtime in an oven.

Pressed Cookies

Pressed cookies are made from soft dough that is placed in acookie press (also called a cookie gun) or pastry bag and pushed throughdecorative disks at the tube’s end, forming fancy-shaped designs.

Refrigerator Cookies

Refrigerator cookies are made from dough shaped intocylinders, refrigerated to become stiff, and then sliced and baked. The doughcan also be prepared in layers, as for pinwheel cookies, or rolled out flat,sprinkled on the surface with fillings, and rolled into a log before chilling.

Rolled Cookies

Rolled cookies are made from stiff, chilled cookie doughwhich is rolled out with a rolling pin and cut with a knife, pastry wheel, orcookie cutter. Often cookies are decorated and then baked – or baked, cooled,and frosted.

Sandwich Cookies

Just as a regular sandwich is created with two slices ofbread similar in size, a sandwich cookie is assembled with twoidentically-sized cookies joined together with a sweet filling.

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