Why does cookie dough cut with a cookie cutter keep their shape when baked but not when it is cut by hand, such as with a knife?

Question

I’ve seen so many of those baking fails when someone tries cutting a heart or unique shape but the dough bakes and spreads into a giant blob or circle lol

Edit: Thank you for all of your responses! I guess most of us can agree on it being fat content and chilling the dough, but it can be any number of factors affecting how it comes out when baked.

In: Other

Answer 1

So many things determine how a cookie behaves in the oven. Ratio of ingredients, temperature of dough when it goes in, how long ago it was mixed, how hard it was mixed, how thick the sheet of dough is.

Most of the cookie fails I’ve seen where the cookie spread out into a blob come from either too much fat or the wrong fat in the dough (like butter vs vegetable oil), room temperature dough going into the hot oven, rather than chilled or frozen first, or just being a recipe that was made to spread out into big, circular cookies (like chocolate chip cookie dough vs shortbread cookies.)