Perhaps the best known drop cookie in North America is chocolate chip.
The dough from drop cookie recipes is too moist to roll out. But because of the moistness of the dough, these cookies usually end up chewier than most rolled cookies.
Drop cookies are less work and less stress than rolled cookies. There are no cookie cutters, floured work surfaces, or no rolling pins to clean up, and there is no heartbreak at the end comparing the shapes the cookie cutters seem to promise you with what came out of your oven. Drop cookies always look very homemade.
Drop cookies generally use about a tablespoon of dough per cookie. Some will spread out, like chocolate chip cookies. Others will not spread out much, but rise a bit instead, like hermit cookies.
The opposite to drop cookies is “rolled cookies.”