Does Pan Banging Cookies Make Them More Delicious?

Find out from the baker who perfected the technique in her new book, ‘100 Cookies’

Photos courtesy of Sarah Keiffer

Beloved baker Sarah Kieffer (The Vanilla Bean Blog) produced universal shock and awe in the cooking and baking community with her “pan banging” technique, in which she taps her cookie sheet in the oven every few minutes during the baking process, causing the cookies to fall and creating two textures: a crisp outer edge and a soft, gooey center (i.e., nirvana).

This month, Kieffer’s bible of cookies is being released to the world. The book, 100 Cookies, is an excellent staple, comprising classics, tons of different kinds of brownies and blondies, and multiple pan-bangers, plus more time-consuming treats for the ambitious baker (French Silk Pie Bars! Maybe when childcare and some semblance of normalcy is back in place — fingers crossed).

“When I was fourteen years old, I embarked on what is now known in my family as the ‘cookie years,’” Kieffer writes in the introduction. “Each day I’d step off a hot school bus, walk a half block to my back door, throw my book bag somewhere in the kitchen, and get to work: mixing, whisking, and baking until my mom took over the kitchen so she could get dinner started. The story I told my mom about my afternoon baking compulsion was that I…