Cookie scoop on a scalloped-edged square yellow plate. The plate is set against a white background.

The Scoop on the New Cookie Scoop

Cookie scoop on a scalloped-edged square yellow plate. The plate is set against a white background.

How many scoops can a cookie scooper scoop when the spring-loaded scooper has sprung? None. Not one cooky cookie.

I have broken two cookie scoops within months (days?) of one another, which makes Nate’s late-night cookie baking a bit of a crumble.

Sure, I could let the batter return to room temperature rather than forcing a cookie scoop through the center of rock-hard refrigerated dough. I also could show some restraint, some self-control, and not try to stuff the scooper to capacity, adding an intense amount of pressure to the spring mechanism-gismo. Maybe I could just hold off on baking cookies for a little while.

Or, I could get a new one and try, try again. So, for Valentine’s Day, I bought a new cookie scoop at the grocery store. It’s exactly like the other two I broke, so this one will probably break too—but maybe Nate can be the one to break it. I’ve been having all the fun lately.

Secretly, I think the cookie scoop is just a bit mischievous. It doesn’t want us to use it. It wants us to use our hands and maybe a teaspoon or spoon—and just leave it alone. A cozy kitchen drawer is like a vacation for the cookie scoop, I suppose. After months hanging on a hook in a store, it probably feels luxurious to unclench next to the rolling pin, breathe in any residual cooking wine that may be left in the glass measuring cups.

We didn’t have cookie scoops when I was growing up. We just estimated, and each cookie got increasingly bigger than the next. Also, we’d get tuckered out halfway through and start baking gigantic cookies to finish the batter and get on with the baking and scorching of mouths.

Sure, it would have been nice to have had evenly formed cookies growing up, but that was for people who fancied themselves as efficient robots, and what’s the fun in that?

Later, all the cooking shows came blasting through the TV in the ‘90s and early 2000s (BAM!) with all the fancy gear—and cookie scoops—and suddenly, the dream of evenly formed cookies was not just for robots and celebrity chefs, anymore. I could live that dream, too!

But the dream’s only as good as the person holding the cookie scoop, and the parchment paper in my kitchen is lined with broken scoops and cookies and cookie scoops’ dreams that turn to nightmares.

I promise I’ll be good to this one. I promise I won’t try to fill it with too much batter or crack its cute little face open on a block of super stiff butter cookie dough. Or accidentally drop it down the garbage disposal and break both it and the garbage disposal with just a flip of a switch. Yep, I’m good at making evenly formed promises, but if the cookie scoop has other plans, well, I know where the rest of them live: aisle 16. I mean, what are the odds of a cookie baking baker breaking every cookie scooper scooping up cookies in the cooking section of aisle 16?

Your Turn: What’s a cooking gadget you could actually live without?

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Published by ckennedy

Author of the DIY blog: Fixin' Leaks and Leeks. Paper/Rock Writing Consultation, Sole Proprietor.

38 thoughts on “The Scoop on the New Cookie Scoop”

  2. When I moved to another state and changed the way I eat, I made a conscious decision to downsize the complexity of my kitchen utensils. I had multiple versions of things that did the same job. I have no ice cream scoops, I have no vegetable peelers, I have discarded almost all the plastic and nonstick utensils. I live simply and happily without them.

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  4. I like to look round interesting shops and discover new things I didn’t know I needed and now you have enlightened me. Next time I am in Lakeland, the sort of shop that makes you want to throw out everything in your kitchen and start all over again, I shall ask for a cookie scoop.

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  7. Garlic presses… Two in a row, broke! I had enough of washing my hands after squashing (with the blade of a large knife) and then peeling off the paper and using my humble knife skills to slice thin pieces of delectable garlic – always with smelly fingers to finish. After two garlic presses gave up the ghost, so to speak, guess what I now do? Yep, that’s right. Smelly fingers and all…

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  11. I try to explain: I have something made in plastic with several, different holes. I use it to remove the central rib from the kale, or the black cabbage. It’s very useful!! I also have yours, to create small balls from the watermelon

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  12. A garlic press. I have one, and for some reason never use it. I just cut up big chunks and throw it in…whatever I’m cooking. Maybe when I embark on the recipes in my Italian cookbook, I’ll break it out again.

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  13. I used to have an ice cream scooper like that, but larger, of course. It also broke. I didn’t replace it because a big metal spoon worked just as well, or better, though it didn’t have the nice rounded mound. Who cares about that with ice cream though anyway?

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