Can You Make Cookies with Self-Rising Flour?

It’s a common conundrum, especially if you live in the South. You want to make cookies, but all you have is self-rising flour. The problem is, while many cookie recipes use baking soda, cookies generally do not contain baking powder. Self-rising flour does contain baking powder. And, even if a cookie recipe uses baking powder, self-rising flour still cannot be used. If you don’t have all-purpose flour, can you even make cookies at all? Yes! Read on to find out more about why baking soda is used in cookies, and what happens when you use baking powder instead.

The Purpose of Baking Soda in Cookies

Just to recap, self-rising flour contains baking powder, which is baking soda plus an acid meant for leavening. When liquid is added, these act together to form carbon dioxide and thus help baked goods made with flour rise or create lift. When cookie recipes call for baking soda, no acid ingredient is added to the dough at all. So, clearly, the baking soda is meant for some other purpose than leavening, as without an acid to form carbon dioxide, it will not cause your cookies to “rise” while they are baking, at least not very much (more on that below).

There is a lot of confusion about the use of baking soda instead of baking powder in cookies, though. Baking soda is used in cookies to help them spread and to create a denser, more chewy cookie. This is why you see it in chocolate chip cookie recipes. Baking soda slows down the time it takes for the cookie to set up and gives the butter and sugar more time to melt, which is a very good thing. The result is a more spread out cookie with that nice crispy-chewy texture and a darker color. There is very little leavening action from this, meaning, again, the baking soda is not making the cookies “rise.” It’s not creating lift.

Now, this is not to say baking soda doesn’t release some carbon dioxide even without an acid. When mixed with a liquid, it does. But, it’s going to be done doing any of this by the time your cookies are in the oven, and it won’t make much difference in terms of leavening. Brown sugar is slightly acidic, so this can create some reaction, but it’s minimal.

Leavening Is Not the Primary Purpose of Baking Soda In Cookies

It is often claimed that baking soda is used for cookies with acidic ingredients like brown sugar or yogurt. This is erroneous. Many cookie recipes use baking soda, and few contain yogurt. And it’s very common to use baking soda along with white sugar instead of brown sugar.

Leavening is not the primary reason baking soda is used in cookies, since, even with a slightly acidic ingredient such as brown sugar, chocolate, lemon juice, etc., more liquid needs to be present to get the baking soda to activate. The chemical reaction that results in carbon dioxide bubbles and therefore lift needs the presence of moisture and often, cookie doughs don’t have enough moisture, especially given the weak acids typically used.

For a more detailed scientific explanation regarding baking soda vs. baking powder for cookies, see Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking.

Using Both Baking Powder and Baking Soda

But, as I said, you can use baking powder in cookies, and this means it’s at least possible to use self-rising flour in cookie dough. But, we aren’t out of the woods yet. There’s a problem to solve, as discussed below.

Some cookie recipes call for BOTH baking soda and baking powder. When you use baking soda, and therefore when you use self-rising flour, this spreading process I talked about with baking soda will not occur. So, the same cookies cooked with baking powder instead of baking soda will not spread out and be as thin, and will not be as chewy and crispy. They will have more lift. They will not necessarily be cakey, though, as is often claimed.

There are “chewy chocolate chip cookie” recipes that call for baking powder instead of baking soda. Be realistic in your expectations for these recipes. While it may be hard to get chewy cookies, what you can get are soft and gooey cookies, which, when it comes to chocolate chip cookies, are somewhere on the “best cookie” continuum, don’t you think?

The Problem: Which Cookie Recipes?

Let’s assume we want to make chocolate chip cookies. The problem we have is figuring out what kind of recipes to look for. It would be nice if we could just find recipes using baking powder, which are numerous, and then just leave out the baking powder. Most of these recipes also add baking soda, but let’s assume we have baking soda. The problem is that the amount of baking powder called for in these cookie recipes is much less than the amount already contained in your self-rising flour! You can’t just substitute in self-rising flour for all-purpose and leave out the baking powder. The recipe will not turn out as intended.

Recipes Calling for Self-Rising Flour Are the Best Choice

Therefore, I would advise that you look for cookie recipes using self-rising flour. I’ve noticed that most of those sharing cookie recipes using self-rising flour seem to think it’s quite normal to use baking powder in cookies. For this reason, it is difficult to know what kind of texture they expect for their cookies. However, most recipe descriptions will at least attempt to describe the intended texture, and it’s usually something like soft and gooey. So, at least the recipes using self-rising flour will have been developed using this ingredient, which has more baking powder than would otherwise be used. I’ve included links to some popular recipes below.

Not All Cookies Can Be Made by Substituting Self-Rising Flour

Despite some of the information above, it is still possible to achieve crunchy cookies and many other textures using self-rising flour. To do this, however, you’d have to experiment and know how to alter the specific ingredient amounts. Cookies that don’t use any leavening at all, like shortbread cookies, will be something else entirely if self-rising is used.

However, most common cookies, like snickerdoodles, oatmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chip, etc. can probably be made using self-rising. Again, my best advice is that if you want to make a specific kind of cookie using self-rising, look for recipes that call for self-rising. Don’t try to convert or simply substitute it for all-purpose, as this will undoubtedly fail.