When baking cakes, I often find that there are instructions for high altitude, which usually is just a matter of adding some extra flour.
I understand the concept of high altitudes having less atmospheric pressure, which then allows baked goods to rise more easily (too much), and thus the addition of flour.
However such alterations are not often provided with cookie recipes. What is a good way to know how to adjust cookies for high altitude, or if such an adjustment is even necessary?
There is a fairly detailed answer to this available here1.
It appears that the answer depends a little on the type of cookie. If you have a cookie that has a great deal of air in it you'll have the same problem as cakes do. If you are working with a very dense cookie that can't really fall (since there isn't anywhere to go). At that point you're just down to watching baking times and temperatures, which are easier to monitor.
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1 original source no longer active, link to web archive
I would look at recipes which do give a high-altitude version, such as the Toll House recipe on the chocolate chips bag, and make proportional reductions / changes to the recipe you have that doesn't give a high-altitude version.
e.g. if Toll House increases flour from 2 1/4 c to 2 1/2 cups, I would multiply the flour in your recipe by 1.111 (10/9)
I cook at a summer camp at 9200 ft. above sea level. I add 1/4 cup flour to a batch of 36 chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies. They rise and look beautiful, but are hard after one day, so need to be served the day I bake them. I usually make my cookies from scratch. I have figured this out through trial and error; the higher the altitude, the more the adjustment. If I do use a box mix, and follow the directions on a box, the cookies are flat. I think this is because they are basing high altitude at above 5000 feet, but we are a lot higher! Good Luck!
I'm currently cooking and baking a mile high (by location, not state of mind). I follow Chef Jacob Burton's (Stella Culinary Institute) rules for high altitude baking. Basically... reduce sugar, increase liquid, raise temperature, add flour, reduce leavening. That's the simple list. But watching his video online a few times is pretty helpful.
For one, water boils at a slightly lower temperature at a higher altitude, which means that you need to cook things longer, because once water reaches boiling, the temperature doesn't increase, so the effective cooking temperature of water is lower. Similar changes need to be made if you are trying to fry foods.
