Cookies are burnt: How to save the cookies…

A moment’s lapse in attention and burnt cookies come out of the oven. This can happen – but it doesn’t always mean you have to throw the cookies away.

Burnt cookies are annoying: you have carefully weighed the ingredients, kneaded the dough well and left it to rest, cut out the cookies and put them in the oven. Then you lose track of time as you prepare the batch for the next baking tray. The cookies are already too dark.

The sight of burnt cookies can be frustrating, but before you have to throw the whole batch away, there are some creative hacks that can help save your cookies and keep them from the garbage can. Not only will you have more treats, but you can also prevent food waste.

Saving burnt cookies: how to do it

You don’t have to sort out every burnt cookie straight away. If only the base or a few corners here and there are black, you can still save the burnt cookies.

Important: Let the cookies cool completely first. Otherwise they will crumble when you try to rescue them.

You can then easily remove the black spots from the cooled, burnt cookies:

  • Burnt cookie base: Carefully go over the cookie base with a kitchen grater until the dark layer is completely removed. A Parmesan grater or lemon grater, for example, are particularly suitable as they can grate very finely.
  • Burnt areas: You can also use a grater if the corners or areas on the top of your cookies are burnt. Alternatively, you can also use a sharp kitchen knife.

Conceal burnt cookies

You may be able to tell that your rescued burnt cookies have been burnt by the missing corners and edges or the roughened cookie base.

But you can cleverly conceal these small flaws:

  • Melt couverture or chocolate icing and dip the cookie in it or coat it with it.
  • A glaze made from powdered sugar is also suitable for making up for the removed areas.
  • If you add sprinkles, sugar pearls, nuts or brittle to the icing or chocolate coating, it will hardly be noticeable that the cookies were once burnt, at least visually.

In terms of taste, however, these decorations can only do so much about the fact that burnt cookies are often too dry and hard.

However, there are ways in which you can soften cookies that are too hard:

  • Put a piece of apple in the tin with the hard cookies. The apple releases moisture, which softens the cookies again. To avoid mold, you should replace the piece of apple with a fresh one every day.
  • As an alternative to the apple, you can also place a slice of sourdough bread in the cookie tin. The same applies here: replace it regularly to prevent mold from forming.

What else you can do with burnt cookies

Saved burnt cookies sometimes look and taste different to those that you took out of the oven on time. As described above, you can then embellish them and make them softer again or use them as a base for other recipes. This is particularly useful if the cookies have broken or crumbled during your rescue attempts.

You can use the rescued cookie scraps in this way, for example:

  • Crumble them up and use them in recipes instead of cookie. For example, you can use them to refine (vegan) tiramisu, cake pops or other layered desserts.
  • You can also use them to make crumbles for apple crumbles or use them to make cookies by using them as a base for rum balls.
  • You could also make a sweet speculoos cream, a speculoos cake or a speculoos mousse. Instead of speculoos, other dry cookies are also suitable for these recipes.

However, the easiest way is to avoid burnt cookies in the first place. Set yourself a kitchen timer when baking and make sure that the oven is not too hot. You can find out how to avoid other mistakes when baking cookies here: