Cookies!

[vakkotaur]

A few years ago I tried making chocolate chip cookies. "Tried" being the operative word. What I wound up with, repeatedly, was dough that looked good to me but when baked would spread out way thin and just be a mess.

Today I did bit of a web search and found a few hints about what might have caused that and what to do about it. I made chocolate chip cookies this morning and they pretty much turned out. It wasn't a perfect run, but it was much, much better than anything before.

What had been going wrong? Maybe a few things. I probably wasn't beating the egg/sugar/vanilla mix enough and thus not dissolving the sugar(s) properly. I wasn't keeping the cookie sheet(s) well away from the stove until baking time (the stovetop being a convenient flat surface in a small kitchen with a very cluttered table). And I wasn't baking on the top rack in the oven.

What went wrong today? The cookies I didn't bake on the top rack either should have waited for the top rack or had (even) more baking time. It wouldn't have hurt to refrigerate the dough for a few minutes before shaping/making the cookies. Smaller spoonfuls and/or more spacing would be a Good Idea. And I went way overboard on the chocolate chips so in places there's more chocolate chip than cookie.

Still, the cookies came out cookie shaped this time. The rest is down to tweaking, I think. Trying the tweaks won't happen soon as I don't plan on baking cookies all that often.

Comments

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

And I went way overboard on the chocolate chips so in places there's more chocolate chip than cookie.

You say that like it's a bad thing...

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

When it means picking up a cookie and it falls apart, it is a bad thing.

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

I made cookies from the Nestle pre-made cookie dough. They tasted great, but perusing the ingredients list revealed that they were not what mother used to make. Far too many ingredients that sounded like they belonged in a shampoo bottle.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

The closer to "scratch" everything is, the better. But I am not going all the way to growing everything myself (I simply can't, for on thing) or going nutso for 'organic' nonsense.

[roby-panther.livejournal.com]

The first time I ever made oatmeal raisin cookies I found out that powdered sugar doesn't make for the same cookie consistency when you mistake it for flour.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of the other change I made. I now have, and use, a proper flour sifter. I imagine that a flour-less high-sugar cookie doesn't work very well. Did you end up with oatmeal raisin soup? Or crumbs?

[roby-panther.livejournal.com]

Endeded up with very thin, ultra crispy flat cookies, if you could call them cookies.

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

Too thin usually is due to too much fat. The fat is not absorbed by the flour and when heated creates a puddle.

Results of my tinkering

[temperlj.livejournal.com]

*secret revealed to perfect cookies*
I use the recipe on the chocolate *chunks* bag and keep them frozen until I need them. I tinker by adding 1/4 less flour which makes a softer cookie.

I always make sure to leave the butter out about 3 hours before I want to mix (one on hot days)
I creme the butter/sugars mix *very well*
Add flour (already pre-mixed w/dry ingredients)
THEN add a pre-whipped vanilla/egg mixture

I stage 3 cookie sheets with dough lumps (the pre-refrigeration is a good idea) so that one is baking, one is cooling and one is ready to rock and roll. (This also requires 2 cooling racks)

I can chunk out a triple batch in about 2 hours.

Re: Results of my tinkering

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I did cream the sugar/vanilla/egg mix for some time. Made sure it was wel creamed - and then mixed the other dry ingredients in very gently so as not to overmix them.

I only had cold butter, so I did zap it in the microwave, but only for a few seconds at a time with a good 'rest' between zaps and the result was soft but not molten butter.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Another potential pitfall in cookie recipes: Over the last 25 years or so, the fat sources used in cookies have changed significantly. Your grandmother's cookie recipe that called for butter, for instance, is likely to change significantly in consistency if you use today's "vegetable oil spread" (no longer labeled as "margarine" because it has so much water whipped into it that it may not qualify for the legal definition of margarine, alas.) I discovered in the early 90s that my cookie recipes were no longer reliable. I thought it was the quality of the flour, but after quite a lot of examination and experimentation I figured out that it was the margarine. The new formulations add so much water that it alters the behavior of the dough, both softening it and changing the texture of the final product to something more rubbery and tough. In most of the supermarkets around here, Land O Lakes is the only brand of "margarine" that still has the right ratio of fat to water for recipes from the 60s and 70s. Recipes from the 30s and 40s are usually butter-based, and butter has a lower melting temperature than hydrogenated vegetable fats, so that's another discontinuity.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Fortunately the recipe I was using called for butter and butter is what I have and use.