Pastry Chef Duff Goldman's Best Tips For Baking Chocolate Chip and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Duff GoldmanPhoto byEugene Gologursky/Getty

Duff Goldman is a celebrated pastry chef, cookbook writer and television personality who is featured on the Food Network. He is the Executive Chef of the Charm City Cakes shop, which was also a reality baking television show ''Ace of Cakes''. His second shop, ''Charm City Cakes West,'' is currently featured on the Food Network ''Duff Till Dawn'' and "Cake Masters" baking competition series.

The acclaimed pastry chef has some great tips for baking cookies. Perfect timing considering Halloween is just around the corner. Here are some of Duff Goldman's tips from Delish's Duff Goldman's Secrets For Baking The Best Cookies and the Daily Meal's 13 Pro Tips For Making The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies.

We can start with where it all begins, and that is the dough. Pre-Making the Dough is important. It's all about the prep time, especially with the holiday season upon us. "When I'm entertaining, dessert is always the thing my guests look most forward to and cookies are always on the menu," he said. As a shortcut, Goldman makes his cookie dough ahead of time. As early as October, I’ll get my dough prepared, roll it out into sheets, and freeze it."

I think the next tip is possibly, the most important one and that is Baking Cookies That Are Just Right! Being careful not to overbake, or underbake cookies is something most home bakers have to deal with everytime they bake. "If you under-bake them, you’ll end up with a doughy mess. If you over bake them, you're crunching on granola bars," said Goldman. "I like to take them out of the oven as soon as they start to develop some color. Then you end up with perfect gooey-in-the-middle cookies."

Next tip, is about Perfecting The Oatmeal Raisin Cookie. A tride and true classic cookie that has somehow been outloved by the chocolate chip cookie over the years. "Oatmeal raisin cookies get a bad rep because of the oatmeal," said Goldman. "I like to soak the oatmeal and raisins ahead of time, getting them super moist and plump." He also likes to add toasted nuts.

And lastly, is a tip I just started incorporating recently, thanks to Duff. For Chocolate Chip Cookies Use Multiple Kinds of Chocolate. ''Most home bakers will resort to a bag of semisweet chocolate chips they picked up from the grocery store when making chocolate chip cookies.'' I now use dark chocolate and milk chocolate chunks together. I cut the chunks from a bar myself and add them into my cookies and what a difference. You can do this with store-bought bags of chocolate chips as well :)