Cookie Difficulty Ratings

Hello Cookie Bakers!!  You may have noticed that a Cookie Difficulty Ratings is given to each recipe in my cookie blogs. From experience, I can truthfully say, there have been too many times I’ve read a cookie recipe thinking it was going to be a lot easier than it actually was, or I started baking cookies thinking I was going to be done in an hour or two, and then realize several hours later that I’m still baking!  I came up with the below Cookie Rating Difficult Ratings system  to help bakers quickly determine the time and effort needed for each cookie recipe.

Cookie Difficulty Ratings Definitions:

Time, effort, the number to steps, decorating, and cleaning up are all part of the cookie baking process. I’ve defined my Cookie Difficulty Ratings scale by taking all of these variables into consideration. The scale isn’t referring just to the number of steps, or the time, or the detailed process…it’s everything taken together.

Most of the recipes in Cookies by Bess are either 2 or 3 stars. Grandma Bess said, many times while being interviewed on talk shows or for newspaper articles, that her recipes are easy to follow and easy to make. Now that I’m on this journey of baking all of Bess’s recipes, I have to agree. But, I would also add that Bess’s cookies are generally smaller than most and therefore take a bit more time to bake than your basic chocolate chip or peanut butter type cookie. They recipes aren’t necessarily hard, but they may be a bit more time consuming.

I have come across a couple 1-star recipes. These recpes tend to be a simple drop cookie that required basic ingredients and bake up nicely. There are also a few 4-star recipes that have really tested my baking skills. I never said I was a professional baker, but I will give myself credit for having baked a lot of Bess’s cookies. The 4-star recipes tend to be those that require specific shaping and detail. These can certainly be mastered, but will  take a lot of practice and patience to get just right!

I hope this Cookie Difficulty Ratings scale is helpful in determining if and when you will tackle one recipe versus another. I would love your feedback on the accuracy of the ratings for the cookie recipes you try.  Please comment on the blogs on the Contact Janet page, or on the Join the Community page.

Thank you all so much for continuing to visit Cookies by Bess and reading our blogs!  It’s been so much fun baking my Grandma Bess’s cookie recipes and then writing about them in my blog.  I hope you will continue to visit CookiesbyBess.com, read our blogs, and share your thoughts and stories.

I truly appreciate you sharing your thoughts, insights, opinions, and experience!

XXOO,

Janet