You set your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, just like your Grandma's perfect cookie recipe says. And 12 minutes later, they taste nothing like hers.
Don't blame yourself right away. Your oven might not be heating to the proper temperature.
Before you spend money on replacement parts or on a thermometer to hang inside your oven, try this simple experiment from the American Chemical Society's Reactions YouTube page to find out if that really is the problem.
All you need is some aluminum foil and table sugar.
Reactions/YouTube
Steps:
- Heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and wait for it to come to temperature.
- Form little boats out of the aluminum foil, about the size of your fist.
- Place a spoonful of table sugar in each boat.
- Bake the first boat for 15 minutes, then take it out.
- Raise the oven temperature to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and wait for it to heat up.
- Bake the second boat for 15 minutes, then take it out.
If your oven is at the right temperature, the first sugar sample should still be white, and the second should be golden brown and melty.
This is because the process of caramelization begins above 356 degrees Fahrenheit, and sugar begins melting at 367 degrees Fahrenheit.
So if both are white, your oven is running cool — it is heating to a lower temperature than what you're setting it to.
And if both are caramelized, it's running hot and heating to a higher temp than set by the dial.
Now you can adjust your oven temperature up or down, depending on how the experiment turned out.
Here's the full video from the ACS:
