I don’t know if “counting carbohydrates” qualifies as an oxymoron, but it sure feels like one sometimes.
One of my favorite pleasures in life is making cookies for my kids. The smell of them baking, the warmth in the kitchen—who doesn’t love that? What I don’t love is how hard food companies make it to figure out the carbohydrates in something as simple as a cookie.
Here are three tricks I use when baking cookies that might make your life (and math) a little easier.
1. Serving Sizes That Make No Sense
The cookie mix I used recommended “2.5 tablespoons” of dough for each cookie once everything was mixed. Now, let’s be honest—cookie dough is sticky, messy, and in no way friendly to measuring spoons. Am I really supposed to scoop out exactly 2 tablespoons and then half of another? With what—my “2.5-tablespoon” measuring spoon?
Instead, I recommend finding a tool that works for you to keep the cookies consistent. A regular teaspoon works fine if you want smaller cookies. Personally, I use a small ice cream scoop that measures about 2 tablespoons. Quick, easy, and no sticky math.
2. Keeping Them the Same Size
This step isn’t necessary, but my ADHD brain can’t handle uneven cookies. To keep things neat, I drop each dough ball into a cupcake tin (I use two 12-cup pans). That way, every cookie comes out the same size—like I’m running my own little cookie company. Bonus: they bake evenly, too.
3. Calculating the Carbs (Without Losing Your Mind)
Here’s where the math comes in. The package stated that the mix would yield 22 cookies, with each cookie containing 18 grams of carbohydrates. But I ended up with 24 cookies.
So here’s how I adjusted:
- Multiply the number of servings on the package (22) by the carbs per serving (18). That gave me 396 grams of carbohydrate in the whole batch.
- Then divide that total (396) by the actual number of cookies I made (24).
- The result? Each cookie has about 16.5 grams of carbohydrate.
Simple math, but it makes a big difference if you’re counting carbs.
I hope this little method helps someone out there. Baking should be fun, not frustrating—especially when the math is as sweet as the cookies.