Resting the dough also helps relax the gluten in the flour, allowing for a more crisp or crumbly texture (versus chewy, which is desirable in bread but not always so in cookies). Same principle that's used to rest a pie shell, so it doesn't shrink while baking. Resting in the fridge is preferred as butter has a pretty low melting point--it's soft at 70F--so that the dough is easier to handle when portioning. Plus there's a lot of physics that happens when the cool dough hits a hot oven--steaming off the water in the butter and eggs happens at a different temperature than the melting of the butter and the coagulation of the egg proteins. And then there's the melting of the chocolate chips...
But it is worth experimenting; that's the fun of baking and cooking!
Many baking recipes that don't have have to urgently be baked (like angel food), benefit from a slight rest to allow the dough to relax and the flour to fully hydrate. For that I don't usually chill the dough, but I'll leave it at room temperature for 20 minutes or so.
Some cookies are unusually high in fat content and if you don't chill the dough, it will spread far too much because room temperature butter will melt before proteins begin to set the structure.
Some cookies, if you DO chill them, might not spread enough, and you'll wind up with pucks.
In my experience, if the recipe calls for a certain amount of chilling, there's a reason, but it is often different with each recipe. More often than not, the handling/baking of the cookie calls for fat to be as cold as possible for it to perform well.
Of course there are refrigerator cookies, which are formed into (usually) a roll and sliced- most of them can't be sliced neatly without chilling. On the other hand, many drop cookie doughs can be hard to handle cold, leaving you to find room in the refrigerator for sheets of formed cookies if you want to chill them. There are some fancier cookies- pinwheels and the like, that also need to be handled cold.
It depends a lot on the type of cookie. For a type of buttery cut out cookie I make, chilling the dough makes it much easier work with, but also makes the baked cookies less brittle. They're all good once they're frosted, but there's definitely a difference in texture between the 1st (most chilled) and last (least chilled/laziest/omg am I done yet?) batch. I'd say play around with it in the future. If you find you plan ahead well enough to allow for chilling, give it a try. If you want spur of the moment cookies and don't have time to chill them, make note of the differences. Eventually you'll figure out which cookies you think are worth the time to chill.
It all depends upon the cookie. Some cookies definitely benefit from a lengthy chilling. It does prevent the cookie from spreading out too much when it bakes. But that's not true in all cases.
Very little, in my experience. It might relax the dough a bit if you overhandled it. I frequently do some cookies in three batches, and there's virtually no difference between the first sheet and the third, which has been sitting at room temperature for a half hour or so. Chilling might be a good idea if you work with warm ingredients.
It stops the dough from spreading out too much. Unchilled dough often yields cookies that are thin, flat and greasy (butter). Chilling the dough gives your cookies heft and the butter doesn't melt out too quickly resulting in a better product.
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But it is worth experimenting; that's the fun of baking and cooking!
Some cookies are unusually high in fat content and if you don't chill the dough, it will spread far too much because room temperature butter will melt before proteins begin to set the structure.
Some cookies, if you DO chill them, might not spread enough, and you'll wind up with pucks.
In my experience, if the recipe calls for a certain amount of chilling, there's a reason, but it is often different with each recipe. More often than not, the handling/baking of the cookie calls for fat to be as cold as possible for it to perform well.