Baking Powder Instead of Baking Soda in Cookies (Ratio)

A yes-or-no answer, the 3 to 1 swap ratio and why the published rules disagree, plus a chocolate chip cookie adapted from a published recipe that uses baking powder only. A formula, not a bake of our own.

Treat this as a different cookie, not a copy of your soda cookie. The swap works, and this page gives you the ratio, the reasons behind it, and a full dough written for baking powder only.

Nobody at SodaRecipe has baked this cookie. It's a published formula from Cookie Madness, adapted by us, and every result described below comes from someone else's published test.

So, can you use baking powder instead of baking soda in cookies?

Yes. The cookie that comes out is different, though. Many bakers who swap powder in for soda report the same drift: a puffier, taller, cakier, paler cookie that spreads less and browns less. Bakers who write powder-only recipes on purpose pack them with chips and nuts, or bake hotter, to get color.

Cookie Madness, the source of our formula, quotes the saying that soda spreads and powder puffs. It says a baking-powder-only dough tends toward soft, puffy and pale, which is why the author raised the oven from 350 F to 375 F and loaded the dough with chips and nuts. Chowhound describes it the same way: powder gives lighter, fluffier cookies, soda promotes browning and flatter edges.

This page stays on the powder-only question. For the two leaveners side by side in one dough, see baking soda vs baking powder in cookies. For every other replacement, see baking soda replacement.

How much baking powder to use: 3 to 1, 4 to 1, or far less

Three numbers circulate, and they don't agree.

3 to 1. Bob's Red Mill states the swap as 3 teaspoons of baking powder for every 1 teaspoon of baking soda the recipe calls for. Its page is an editorial article with no cookie recipe, no oven time or temperature and no nutrition. This is the rule to start from, and it matches the one on our baking soda replacement page.

4 to 1. Handle the Heat says about 1 tsp of baking powder raises 1 cup of flour, against about 1/4 tsp of baking soda. That is a lift-only rule, and it is 4 to 1. It's a rule about rising, not about spread or browning, and the same page advises against swapping in recipes that rely on soda for browning or spread.

Far less. The published powder-only formulas use much less than either rule would suggest. Cookie Madness uses 1 tsp of baking powder for 380 g of flour. By our math that is about 1/3 tsp per cup of flour, about a third of the 1 tsp per cup in the lift-only rule. Taste of Home's Chunky Drop Cookies use 3/4 tsp of baking powder for 2 1/2 cups of flour, with no soda.

So treat 3 to 1 as a starting point. If a recipe has 1 tsp of soda for 3 cups of flour, 3 tsp of powder is a lot, and the published powder-only recipes suggest you may want less. The sources don't settle where the right amount sits for a given dough.

The Food Science / Lab Kitchen Note

According to Handle the Heat, baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate. It needs an acid in the recipe, like buttermilk, lemon juice or brown sugar, to release carbon dioxide. Baking powder contains baking soda plus a dry acid, usually cream of tartar or tartaric acid, and a little cornstarch to keep it dry.

Brown sugar is among the acids that Handle the Heat and Bob's Red Mill name. No source we opened puts a number on that acid, so we don't either. Bob's Red Mill also says cookies that rely heavily on acidic ingredients are not the best candidates for replacing baking soda.

Handle the Heat says most U.S. baking powders are double-acting and that single-acting powders react only once when wet. Tasty's panel scored single-acting and double-acting powder in cookies, but no source gives a measurement.

Now the arithmetic, which is ours. Our dough has 380 g of flour and 1 tsp of powder. At the Handle the Heat lift-only rate of 1 tsp per cup, 3 cups of flour would take about 3 tsp, so our dough sits at about a third of that. The 3 to 1 rule needs a soda amount to start from, and this dough has none.

On sodium, the leaveners are a minor share here. By our math, 1 tsp of salt at about 6 g carries roughly 39 mg of sodium per cookie over 60 cookies, and the powder about 8 mg. These come from typical USDA values and our weight estimates.

Soda, single-acting powder, double-acting powder

This table compares published data, not our bakes. Where no source gives a value, the cell says so.

Handle the Heat tested the leaveners in its own Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. The powder-only batch was extra thick and tall, not chewy, more fluffy and not quite as flavorful, and it did not brown or spread as much. Chowhound describes baking powder as giving lighter, fluffier cookies. No source gives pH, spread diameter or height for any of the three variants.

What the published sources actually are

No peer-reviewed study of baking powder versus baking soda and cookie spread turned up in our search. What exists is informal testing, and we call it that. Tasty ran a published five-batch side-by-side test on the classic Nestle Toll House chocolate chip dough, changing only the leavener and keeping the amount the same across batches. It doesn't state the quantities or the number of tasters, so it's a panel test, not a measurement. Handle the Heat is a single-author blog test of its own recipe, and it doesn't give the leavener amounts per batch either.

The other sources are not tests at all. The Bob's Red Mill page is an editorial article that states the 3 to 1 rule without showing a bake. Cookie Madness and Taste of Home are published recipes, not experiments: they show that powder-only cookies are made and what amounts their authors chose. Because of all this, treat every number on this page as a starting point for your own bake.

The formula, and what we changed

The dough is Cookie Madness's Big Batch Triple Chip Cookies, adapted. We kept its flour, baking powder, salt, butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla, with its weights, its 375 F oven, its 12 to 15 minutes and its 5-minute rest on the sheet. The original loads the dough with 1 cup of bittersweet chips, 1 cup of extra dark chips, 1 cup of white chips and 1 cup of toasted chopped pecans.

Our adaptation drops the white chips and the pecans and uses 3 cups of chocolate chips only. That changes the mix-in weight and type from the source, so treat the texture and browning as unknown. The chip weights are our estimate, because the source doesn't give them.

Common mistakes

Tripling by heaped spoon. Three heaped teaspoons of powder is far more than three level ones, and the published powder-only recipes use much less anyway. Level the spoon, and weigh 4.6 g per teaspoon if you use a scale. That weight is our estimate.

Expecting the same spread. Powder puffs and soda spreads, so expect a taller, paler cookie than a soda cookie.

Using old powder. Handle the Heat says it's best to use both leaveners within about 6 to 12 months once opened. If the cookies come out flat and dense, check the date on the tin before you blame the recipe.

Swaps and what changes

For longer lists of replacements, see baking soda replacement.

Tips for the dough

Weigh the flour: the 380 g is the source's weight, and a cup scooped by hand can differ.

Whisk the powder into the flour first. 1 tsp for 380 g of flour is the source's amount, even though it looks like too little leavener.

Portion by weight if you want 60 cookies. A generous scoop gives you fewer, bigger cookies.

Storing the cookies

No storage time is sourced for this cookie.

As a labeled benchmark only, Taste of Home gives these times for a different baking-powder-only cookie: airtight at room temperature up to 4 days, refrigerated up to a week, frozen up to 2 months, either as baked cookies or as unbaked dough balls. Don't read those as a promise for our dough.

Nutrition note

The numbers on the card are our calculation from typical USDA FoodData Central values, for one cookie at a yield of 60, assuming unsalted butter and double-acting baking powder. The source page gives no nutrition, so these are estimates.