Working on Oatmeal Raisin Cookies - 1st Attempt

I received some excellent input from my friends about what an oatmeal raisin cookie should be like. The only universally loved quality seems to be a chewy center with crisp edges. Desired spice levels, sweetness, nut inclusion/exclusion, and overall healthiness vary.

Since my standard menu of cookies will probably look something like this - chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, ginger - I think I do need to include walnuts in the oatmeal raisin cookie. Some people really love nuts. Folks who hate them can either pick a different cookie (the chocolate chip cookies will be nut-free) or pre-order a special batch without walnuts. Also, I feel that if you're looking for a healthy cookie, maybe you shouldn't eat a cookie. I'll try it with applesauce for some of the fat, but only because I feel like that could lead to good flavor and texture for this particular cookie. If full fat tastes better, so be it. Since there will be a ginger cookie - and likely a highly spiced one - I will aim for mild cinammon in the oatmeal raisin cookie. As with all my cookies, it will not be too sweet, and it will be small.

For chewiness, I'll try melted butter (rather than creamed butter and sugar) and brown sugar. For crispiness (on the edges), I'll be sure to include some white sugar. The walnuts shall be toasted so they taste awesome. The raisins shall be soaked in some sort of hot liquid so they're plump. Maybe orange juice.

My first trial recipe

Ingredients

3/4 cup raisins
juice of one lemon (couple tbsp, at least)
hot water (enough to cover the raisins)
4 oz (1 stick) butter
3.5 oz (1/2 cup) brown sugar
3.5 oz (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
2 oz (1/2 cup) walnuts, chopped
3.75 oz (3/4 cup) all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (not instant)

Steps

1. Boil the water, pour the lemon juice over the raisins, and then pour enough hot water over the raisins to cover (in a shallow bowl). Let stand while preparing the rest of the dough.
2. Melt the butter. Once melted, combine it with the sugars in a large bowl. Stir and let stand.
3. Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet over medium low heat until they smell really good. Don't burn them.
4. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl.
5. Once the butter/sugar mixture is no longer hot to the touch (warm is OK), add the egg and vanilla and stir to combine.
6. Dump the flour mixture into the butter mixture and stir well to combine. Squeeze the liquid out of the raisins before adding them to the dough. Add the oatmeal and walnuts and stir everything well to combine.
7. Put the bowl in the freezer while you pre-heat the oven to 350° F. Good time for some cleaning, checking email, petting cats, or whatever you like.
8. Use a #40 portioner to drop dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Flatten gently with the palm of your hand. Bake for 10 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. You want to see light browning on just the edges of the cookies. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack as soon as the cookies are firm enough to move.

Results

I tried the first pan exactly as written. They came out very soft and flat and had to cool almost completely on the pan before they were strong enough to move. They still fell apart quite readily the next day.

For the second pan, I did not flatten the dough, and I baked for 12 minutes instead of 10. These held together a bit better - I was able to transfer them to a rack after maybe 3 minutes - but they were still too crumbly. There was more browning on these cookies from the longer bake time, but not flattening them out led to inconsistent shapes. I was worried that they would be hard when cool, but this wasn't the case.

Both versions had excellent flavor and the right level of sweetness, but they were soft all the way through and did not hold together. 

Tasters remarks were 80% enthusiastically positive. The only real feedback I got had to do with the crumbliness and lack of any crispiness. One person said she'd have liked more cinnamon.

This recipe was a good start, but I'm going to make the following changes to the next attempt:

• Increase ratio of white to brown sugar in an effort to get crisp edges.
• Increase amount of flour and stir longer to develop gluten and hopefully help the cookies stay together better.
• Increase cinnamon.

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies
by Jessica Louise

Makes 30 cookies.

Ingredients

6 oz. butter (or 3/4 cup or 1 1/2 sticks)
3.5 oz. granulated sugar (or 1/2 cup)
5.25 oz. brown sugar (or approx. 3/4 cup)
10 oz. all-purpose flour (or approx. 2 cups)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt*
1 egg
1 egg yolk**
1 tbsp. vanilla
6 oz. chocolate chips (half a bag)***

*I use non-iodized, fine sea salt.
**Approximately 2.35 oz. of egg, total.
***Quality matters. A lot. I use Ghirardelli semi-sweet or 60%.

Steps

1. Put the butter in a pan to brown. For tips, try this or this. 
2. Keeping an eye on the butter, combine the sugars in a large mixing bowl. Once the butter is browned, pour it into the sugars and stir to combine.
3. In a separate, medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
4. Once the sugar and butter mixture is no longer hot to the touch (warm is OK), add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. Stir well to combine.
5. Add the flour mixture to the sugar-butter-egg mixture and stir well to incorporate all the flour. 
6. Add the chocolate chips and knead with your hands in the bowl to evenly distribute the chips throughout the batter. It will seem like the chocolate chips don't want to stick in the batter, but that's OK.
7. Heat the oven to 350° F. Put the dough in the freezer while the oven heats up. Now is a good time to clean up. 
8. Once the oven is heated, portion the dough (using a #40 portioner, or a tablespoon, generously rounded) onto parchment-lined baking sheets. You should be able to fit 15 cookies on a standard half-sheet pan. 
9. Bake for 12 minutes, turning the baking sheet half-way through. Remove from the oven when the edges have just started to brown, let them rest on the sheet for a minute, and transfer to a wire rack to cool.
10. Once cool, store in an open plastic zip bag or in a glass or plastic container with the lid only resting lightly on top. You don't want to leave them completely exposed to the air, but having them in an air-tight container ruins the texture, too. 

Working on chocolate chip cookies

Crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle. And this was not right out of the oven. Almost perfect.

I figured out snickerdoodles. Now it's time for chocolate chip cookies.

The photo above is of my second attempt. The first attempt turned out weird (see the problems listed below) but pretty. The second attempt is very nearly perfect. They'd be better with a better chocolate, but I couldn't find Ghirardelli 60% at the co-op.

I'll gather feedback tonight at a party. And make them again in the middle of the week when I have my co-workers over for a Wii party. But they're pretty close to perfect.

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. 

Snickerdoodles! (Part 2)

Yep. This is the recipe for snickerdoodles (which I've decided not to capitalize).

Jessica's snickerdoodles

14.25 oz all-purpose flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks of butter (8 oz), room temperature or slightly cooler
10.6 oz sugar
2 large eggs (3.4 oz)
1.5 tsp vanilla
1 Tb ground cinnamon
1.25 oz sugar

Preheat the oven to 400° and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well to combine. Add the half the flour mixture, mix to combine, then add the rest and mix until all the flour is incorporated. Refrigerate the dough for any amount of time you feel like. Even just 5 minutes makes for a puffier cookie. But the cookies will still be good even if you don't refrigerate the dough. EDIT: I made them again, refrigerating the dough for an hour before baking. DO THIS. It makes a huge difference. The cookies turned out more perfectly than I even thought possible. Everyone at Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house agreed.

The dough for the cookie on the left was not refrigerated.
The dough for the cookie on the right was in the fridge for just 5 to 10 minutes.

Mix together the cinnamon and sugar. Roll 1-inch balls of dough in the cinnamon sugar and place on a baking sheet (I fit 12 on a half sheet pan). Bake for 10 minutes, rotating the baking sheet half way through. Remove from the oven and immediately transfer the cookies to a rack to cool.

They're delicious. Obviously. :)

Peanut butter-filled chocolate cookies

Yep. Yum.

I made these for Karly's housewarming party tonight. They're kind of a lot of work, especially compared to the drop cookies I normally make, but they're worth it for a special occasion.

Peanut butter-filled chocolate cookies
Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Cookies

Makes 32 cookies. But 30 fit perfectly onto two half sheet pans, so you'll eat two raw ones. Beware of salmonella!

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter (I used Maranatha, creamy with salt)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup sifted powdered sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter

Cream the butter, sugars, and peanut butter until light. You'll actually see the color lighten as more air is incorporated. Add the egg and vanilla and mix to combine. Mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl and then mix that into the butter-sugar mixture. The dough will be really stiff, so finish with a wooden spoon if your hand mixer can't handle it.

Mix together the powdered sugar and 1/2 cup peanut butter. It's not a big deal if you get proportion of sugar to peanut butter exactly right; I had to add more peanut butter to get it to combine.

Preheat oven to 350°. Divide the cookie dough into 32 balls, about 1 1/4 inches in diameter. Do the same with the peanut butter mixture, about 3/4 inches in diameter. Flatten a dough ball in the palm of your hand, place a peanut butter ball on top, and fold the cookie dough over the peanut butter to enclose. Roll the mixture into a ball, and set on a non-greased cookie sheet. Parchment paper isn't necessary, as these release easily. Do the same with the rest of the dough. Flatten each ball by pressing on it with a drinking glass dipped in sugar (press the cookie first to get the sugar to stick to the glass).

Bake for eight minutes, rotating the tray half way through. Leave on the cookie sheet for about a minute to set more, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy!

Snickerdoodles!

Aaron says his favorite cookies are Snickerdoodles, so I added them to the menu for his friend Andy's birthday party tonight. I got up at 6:30 a.m. to bake them, and I plan to spend many more mornings baking. It's a lovely way to start the day.

These turned out extremely tasty, but very flat. Possible culprits:

1. Flour. As in, not enough flour. I've been suspecting this as the cause of my recent flat-cookie syndrome, so I've started measuring by weight instead of volume (1 cup of flour = 4.41 oz). I now suspect that modern recipes may be intentionally under-doing it on the flour with the thinking that modern home bakers measure by scooping into a compacted bag of flour. Next time I make these, I'll add an extra two ounces of flour and see what happens.
2. Warm dough. Next time, I'll refrigerate half the dough for a few hours before baking to compare. 

Despite the flatness, a lot of things aren't wrong about these cookies: not too sweet, not overpoweringly cinnamon-y, not tough, not cakey, not dry. They're chewy with a little crunch on the edges, full of buttery flavor, and generally delicious. Recipe after the break.

White chocolate macadamia nut cookies: recipe challenge

I made white chocolate macadamia nut cookies a couple years ago for a co-worker's birthday, but I have no recollection of what recipe I used. I have a vague memory of being adamantly opposed to just using a chocolate chip cookie recipe and swapping white for semi-sweet chocolate and macadamia nuts for walnuts. For some reason, I felt strongly that white chocolate macadamia nut cookies must be a jumble cookie.

But I'm fairly certain that the white chocolate macadamia nut cookies I ate recently and almost died from did contain brown sugar.

So: a challenge. I shall make one version in a jumble and one in a traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Alton Brown's The Puffy

I already have a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. It's this. But Aaron's friends Jeff and Leon requested super-soft chocolate chip cookies for their birthday party, and that recipe is crispy-chewy, not super-soft.

I remembered watching an episode of Good Eats where Alton played with chocolate chip cookie techniques and ingredients to create different styles of cookie. I easily tracked down the recipe and made them.

Commenters on the recipe at the Food Network site complained of two main things: the cookies aren't actually puffy, and they're too sweet. I found the first to be very true. They weren't puffy at all. They were soft, though, so I successfully fulfilled the birthday request. As to the second complaint, I often think baked goods are too sweet. These cookies weren't. They had a nice saltiness to balance out the sweetness. It probably helped that I always use a fairly dark semi-sweet chocolate chip (Guittard in the bulk bin).

I still prefer the crispy-chewy chocolate chip cookies I found on Smitten Kitchen last year, but The Puffy is a good alternative for folks who like a softer cookie.