General Baking Tips

I know that a little bit of magic is responsible for my cookies turning out as well as they do. Or maybe you could call it "love." But there are some practical things I do that many home bakers don't do, and these things make for a better cookie:

1. Weigh ingredients. Especially flour and eggs. A cup of flour is 5 oz. One large egg (cracked) is 1.75 oz.
2. Rotate the baking pan half-way through. 
3. Do not over-bake. It takes some practice to know when to take cookies out of the oven. When in doubt, err on the side of too soon. An under-baked cookie tastes way better than an over-baked one (most of the time).
4. Taste nuts, especially walnuts, before adding them to the batter. Rancid walnuts are gross and are probably a big part of why kids (and adults) think they don't like nuts in cookies. I get mine in bulk at the co-op and store them in the fridge.
5. Always toast nuts before adding them to the batter. So much more flavor that way.
6. Use parchment paper. Then you don't have to deal with greasing cookie sheets or scraping ruined cookies off the pan. I save the used parchment paper and use it again on similar-smelling cookies.
7. Use good butter (like Hope Creamery). And please don't use Crisco. 
8. Use good chocolate. The best chocolate chips I have found are Ghirardelli 60%. And I've tried a lot of chocolate chips. 
9. Use an oven thermometer. Seriously.
10. Enjoy it.

I'll probably think of more. And maybe I'll write little posts explaining why each of these things is important. 

Conversions

This post is mostly for my own reference, since I'm sick of looking this stuff up everything I mess with a recipe. Basically, volume measurements are unreliable. I want to be able to reproduce my recipes nearly exactly, so I convert volume measurements to weight instead. I'll be adding to this.

Ingredient	Volume	Weight
All-purpose flour	1 cup	5 oz
Granulated sugar	1 cup	7 oz
Brown sugar, packed	1 cup	7 oz
Egg, large, whole	1 egg	1.75 oz
Egg, large, white	1 egg white	1.05 oz
Egg, large, yolk	1 egg yolk	0.6 oz

Green tea cake

Some friends are having a Japanese-themed birthday party and asked me to bake a cake. No further instruction or suggestion beyond "awesome." So, I'm making green tea cake. I practiced today so I don't bring something inedible to the party.

Recipe attempt #1
Loosely adapted from Cook's Illustrated's fluffy yellow layer cake recipe.
10.9 oz. cake flour
3 Tbsp corn starch
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
4 Tb powdered buttermilk
4 tsp matcha
1 3/4 cups sugar
10 Tb butter, melted and cooled a bit
1 cup water, lukewarm
3 Tb vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
6 egg yolks (about 3.75 oz)
3 egg whites (about 3.15 oz)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Prepare two nine-inch round cake pans by greasing the bottoms and sides, cutting a round of parchment paper for the bottoms, greasing the paper, and flouring the inside of the pans.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, powdered buttermilk, matcha and 1 1/2 cups of the sugar in a large bowl. Set aside.

Combine butter, water, oil, vanilla, and egg yolks in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Whip the egg whites in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment until foamy. Gradually add the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar, then whip until the whites hold a stiff peak. Transfer the whites to a bowl.

Without bothering to clean the mixer bowl, dump in the flour mixture. Running the whisk on low, add the butter mixture gradually, then mix until just combined. Scrape the sides and mix until all the flour is incorporated (10-15 seconds).

With a rubber spatula, fold in 1/3 of the egg whites to lighten the mixture. Then carefully fold in the rest of the whites until there are no more streaks of white.

Split the batter between the two prepared cake pans. Tap the pans against the counter to release air bubbles.

Bake about 25 minutes, rotating the pans half way through. Cool in the pans on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove the cake from the pans and cool on rack completely.

Frosting

I used Cook's Illustrated's creamy vanilla frosting, plus a teaspoon of matcha.


Problems

I think I over-beat the egg whites a bit, which made them difficult to fold in. But it doesn't seem like this had an impact on the texture of the cake.

I might up the amount of matcha. The batter was a lovely green, but it didn't taste much like green tea. After tasting the actual cake, I think I'll add a teaspoon more.

The side/bottom of the cake is a tiny bit crunchy. I think it will soften after sitting frosted a while, though. I baked the cake for a full 25 minutes. Next time, just 23.

I halved the recipe to just make half a cake (cut it in half and stuck one half on top the other). I also halved the frosting, but it wasn't enough. I'm a bit worried about making this frosting, which CI published alongside a cupcake recipe, since it might not cover. Haven't decided yet what I'm going to do about that.