Cookie Dough Too Sticky - How to Fix?

Sticky cookie dough can be very annoying to work with, staining your hands and your kitchen counter. It may be a while before you know how to portion the cookies and transfer them to the baking sheet.

How to fix sticky cookie dough?

To fix sticky cookie dough, try refrigerating it for 30 minutes first. Cookie dough can become sticky when the butter and eggs in it are heated. If refrigeration doesn’t help, you can save the sticky cookie dough by adding more flour. 

There is no perfect cookie dough. It all depends on how you want the end result to be. You might like your cookies soft and chewy, or you might like them crunchy.

In order to make cookie dough so that the end result has the texture you want, you must learn what each ingredient does in the dough. This will help you make the perfect cookie dough to your liking.

Below we explain what the function of each ingredient is:

• Flour – Flour is the ingredient that has the power to take your cookies from soft and chewy to crispy and crumbly. The gluten in the flour creates the base of the cookie dough. In other words, it is the ingredient that supports the structure of the cookies.
• Sugar - Sugar is an important component of cookie dough. Not only because it adds sweetness, but because the sugar also absorbs moisture and makes the cookies crunchy. It caramelizes and makes the cookies a nice golden color. When the cookies are baked, the sugar melts, spreads through the dough and softens it.
• Fat - The fat you add to the dough coats the gluten particles that the flour adds. This makes the cookies tender and fluffy. If the fat you choose for your cookie dough is butter, you can expect to get cookies with crisp edges.
• Eggs - Eggs are the binding agent. They also contribute to the fluffy texture of the cookies.
• Salt - The recipe may call for just a pinch of salt. However, you should never omit it, since the minimum amount of salt balances all the flavors of the dough.
• Baking Soda - Baking soda helps cookie dough rise. But be careful with this ingredient, as an insufficient amount can make the dough heavy, while an excessive amount gives the cookies an unpleasant and bitter taste.

Knowing how to add or subtract ingredients to achieve the desired texture makes a big difference in the final product.

How do you know if cookie dough is too sticky?

If you’re not a professional cookie cook, you may find it difficult to decide if your cookie dough is the right consistency or too sticky. This can also be applied to sticky bread dough, for which we have another article.

Here are a few things that give away too-sticky cookie dough:

• Dough clumps in the beaters when you use a hand mixer to mix cookie dough.
• You cannot scoop out the dough and transfer it to the baking sheet due to its sticky texture.
• If you take a piece of dough, some of it melts or drips back into the bowl.
• You can’t roll out sugar cookie dough because it sticks to the rolling pin.

Once you know how to identify sticky dough, you’ll be able to figure out what’s causing it and fix it before your cookies are doomed to a sticky end.

Why does my cookie dough stick to me?

There are two causes of sticky cookie dough: less flour than needed and the temperature of the dough.

The latter is affected not only by the temperature of the ingredients you have used to make it, but also by the heat of your hands and the temperature of your kitchen.

Lack of flour is the simplest cause of sticky cookie dough. However, stickiness is also a common problem with cookie doughs that contain a lot of butter and eggs.

These types of masses are very sensitive to body temperature. The longer you knead and the more heat is transferred to the dough from your body, the stickier the dough becomes.

Cookie dough can also be sticky right after you’ve made it, due to the temperature of the butter.

It is recommended to always add butter at room temperature to the dough. Sometimes you can forget to take the butter out of the fridge in advance. In these cases, many people resort to the microwave.

While a few seconds in the microwave can effectively soften butter, it can also make it too hot. Butter added to the dough in liquid form can make the dough feel sticky.

How do you fix wet cookie dough?

If you’ve ended up with wet cookie dough, the first thing to do is double-check the recipe. Perhaps you have added less flour than necessary? You may also have added more wet ingredients than the recipe calls for.

If all the ingredients seem to be added in the correct amount but your cookie dough is sticky, there are two ways to fix it. You must add more flour or refrigerate the dough before you can continue working with it.

1. Cooling

When cookie dough is sticky from hot butter or hand kneading, refrigerating it will solve the problem.

Here’s how to refrigerate the cookie dough:

1. Wrap the cookie dough with food paper. You can also roll the dough between two layers of parchment paper and only then put it in the fridge. This is a handy hack for cut-out cookie dough.
2. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
3. Leave the dough in the fridge longer if you want thicker cookies. The cookies will not spread as much if you put the cold dough on a cookie sheet at room temperature.
4. Once you take the refrigerated dough out of the fridge, use it quickly, as it will go back to its sticky state very quickly.

Tip : If putting the dough in the fridge has helped a bit, but the dough still sticks to your hands, try wetting your hands.

You can handle the sticky dough with wet hands more easily. Keep in mind that you will need to repeatedly wet your hands until you are finished working with the dough to prevent it from sticking to your hands.

Don’t do this for too long though, as this water will transfer into the dough, making it wetter and therefore stickier.

add more flour

If refrigerating the dough hasn’t helped or you simply don’t have the time to wait 30 or more minutes for it to firm up and become easier to handle, your only option is to add more flour.

Here’s how to fix sticky cookie dough by adding more flour:

1. Start by adding a thin layer of flour to the dough and try to manipulate it. While this short-term fix may be enough to get you portioning out the cookies and popping them in the oven, in some cases it may not work.
2. If the dough is still too sticky to handle, keep adding flour little by little to the dough. Knead the dough so that the flour mixes well and spreads through the dough evenly. Avoid over-kneading the dough, unless you want very crispy cookies. By kneading the dough, you enrich it with air. The aerated dough causes the cookies to rise and then fall, making them flat and crisp.
3. If you have sugar cookie dough that is too sticky, be sure to add more flour to the rolling pin and work surface. Dip the cookie cutters in flour to prevent the dough from sticking to them.
4. Lightly dust the cookies with flour to prevent them from sticking to the baking sheet.

What happens when you bake sticky dough?

If you manage to work with sticky cookie dough and portion it out to make cookies, you may not get good results.

When the sticky dough cooks, it will create flat, greasy cookies. Being flat, the cookies will also be quite crisp and crumbly.

If you bake cookies often, you’ve probably ended up with greasy, flat, crunchy cookies at least once. This is not always the result of the dough being too sticky. It may be the result of the pan being too hot when you’ve loaded it with cookies.

If you’re a little sick of the trial and error of baking cookies, why not try our No Bake Sugar Cookies recipe?

How to fix runny cookie dough?

You have to work really hard to make the cookie dough runny. Specifically, you have to add too many eggs to make the dough runny.

If you add more eggs to the dough than the recipe calls for without doubling the rest of the ingredients, the dough will naturally runny.

The cookies probably won’t hold their shape if you try to bake them. And if they are baked, they will taste more like a cake than a cookie. In addition, they will not taste very sweet due to the excess eggs in the dough.

You can try sprucing up the dough by adding more flour and sugar, but it might be easier to find a pie recipe that calls for a thinner dough and switch your plans from cookies to pie.