Can you bake cookies in an air fryer? Times, temperatures and what changes

Short answer: yes, and they are very good. An air fryer is a small convection oven with a strong fan, so it bakes cookies perfectly well — it just does it faster and hotter at the surface, which is where people come unstuck.

The conversion

Take whatever your recipe says for the oven and change two numbers:

• Drop the temperature by about 20 °C (25 °F). A recipe calling for 175 °C becomes about 155 °C.
• Cut the time by roughly a third to a half. Cookies that take 10–13 minutes in the oven usually take 6–9 minutes in an air fryer.

Then check early and keep checking. Air fryer models vary far more than ovens do — basket size, fan speed and wattage all differ — so treat the first batch as calibration rather than a finished product.

Why the temperature has to come down

The heating element in an air fryer sits close above the food, and the fan drives that heat straight onto the top surface. At the oven's temperature, the tops brown and set well before the centre has cooked, which gives you the classic air fryer cookie failure: dark on top, doughy in the middle.

Lowering the temperature lets the heat reach the middle before the surface overcooks.

Line the basket — this is not optional

Raw dough put straight into a perforated basket will sag through the holes and weld itself in place.

Use a round of parchment, ideally the perforated kind sold for air fryers. Two important cautions:

• Never preheat with empty parchment in the basket. Nothing is holding it down and the fan will lift it into the element, where it can scorch or catch.
• Cut it to the size of the food. Parchment covering the whole base blocks the airflow that makes the appliance work.

Do not crowd the basket

This is the rule that matters most, and it is the same one that governs everything else an air fryer does. Cookies need space to spread and air needs room to move around them.

Most baskets fit three or four cookies at a time. That is genuinely the main drawback: for a full batch of 24, the oven is quicker overall because it bakes them all at once. The air fryer wins for small batches — four cookies after dinner without heating a whole oven.

Should you preheat?

Yes, 2–3 minutes. Dough going into a cold basket sits there warming while the fat melts, which encourages spreading before the structure sets. A short preheat gives a better shape.

Baking from frozen

This is where an air fryer genuinely shines. Frozen dough balls go straight in — no thawing — at the same reduced temperature, with 2–3 extra minutes.

Scoop a full batch of dough into balls, freeze them on a tray, then bag them. Fresh cookies on demand in under ten minutes, without making dough. Chilled dough also spreads less, so air fryer cookies from frozen tend to hold a better shape than fresh ones.

What is actually different about the result

Air fryer cookies tend to come out slightly crisper at the edges and softer in the middle than the same dough baked in an oven, because the surface sets faster. Many people prefer them.

They also brown less evenly. The side nearest the element colours first, so rotating the basket halfway through helps if your model runs hot on one side.

Quick reference

• Temperature: oven temperature minus 20 °C — usually 150–160 °C
• Time: 6–9 minutes fresh, 8–12 from frozen
• Batch size: 3–4 cookies, single layer, space between
• Preheat: 2–3 minutes, basket empty and no loose parchment
• Done when: edges set and golden, centres still look slightly underdone — they firm up as they cool

If you want the fuller picture of how the two appliances differ, we compared them directly in air fryer versus oven.