You Don't Need A Stand Mixer To Make Delicious Crinkle Cookies

Despite what social media might tell you, not everyone owns a stand mixer, and that's okay. Stand mixers are nice to have, but they also take up lots of space on a kitchen countertop and are pretty expensive. The good news is that you don't even need one if you like to bake, especially when it comes to simple recipes like crinkle cookies. Most recipes for crinkle cookies call for very soft or melted butter, which means you can easily hand mix the dough and get picture perfect results.

Home-sized models of stand mixers are a relatively modern development. The first models date back about 100 years. This might seem like a long time, but people have been making things like cookies, bread, and pasta for centuries without the help of electric mixers. The only barrier to baking without a mixer is your own arm strength, since you'll be doing all the mixing by hand. So if you're going the mixer-free route, try to always choose recipes like crinkle cookies, which don't require too much strength for steps like creaming butter and sugar.

Skim through any modern cookie recipe and you're bound to find directions for mechanical mixing. Even The Daily Meal's own recipes for strawberry flavored crinkle cookies, chocolate-based crinkle cookies, and red velvet crinkle cookies recommend it. That doesn't mean you need to run out to the store and get a KitchenAid, however. Stand mixers simply make quick work of creaming butter and sugar together, which is just a fancy word for combining the two ingredients into a base for cakes and cookies. For hundreds of years before stand mixers were invented, bakers used their own two hands to get the job of creaming accomplished, and you can do the same. It's a lot easier, however, if you don't have to start with cold butter. This makes recipes like crinkle cookies an excellent option if you don't have a stand mixer.

Look for crinkle cookie recipes that already have melted butter in the ingredients if you're not a confident baker. That way, you can be sure that the cookies will turn out correctly. If you're more confident, however, you can modify most crinkle cookie recipes that call for mechanical mixing into hand mixing recipes. All you need to do is melt the butter or let it get very soft before mixing it with the sugar, or add it at the same time as any vegetable oil.

Even if you do own a stand mixer, it's nice to have some recipes in your repertoire that don't require breaking out the big guns. Yes, stand mixers can make quick work of projects like Italian buttercream, but sometimes you just don't want to deal with the fuss of cleaning the bowl, attachments, and machine after the mixing is done. Not only that, stand mixers are really only best used for larger volume recipes because they're not designed to scrape the edges of the bowl; small volume recipes won't mix properly as a  result. For small-scale baking, go ahead and skip the stand mixer.

Save your stand mixer (and all the cleanup it requires) for bigger jobs that benefit from a lot of mechanical assistance, like kneading bread, whisking egg whites to stiff peaks for meringue, and combining the ingredients for light and fluffy pâte à choux. Easy crinkle cookie recipes will come together in a bowl with just a spoon or spatula in little more than a few minutes. This also means you only have to clean one bowl, which is satisfying in more ways than one.