Did
someone say cookies??? Yes! It’s week three and we’ve begun our
study of those “little cakes”, better known as COOKIES! For the next
month, we will be studying the various methods of production of the cookie
dough and the cookies’ makeup (that is, how they’re transferred from a bowl of
dough and shaped on the baking sheet).
But
first things first. Just what is a cookie? The word itself is from
the Dutch language; Koekje means “small or little cakes”.
According to the website whatscookingamerica.net, “the first historic record of
cookies was their use as test cakes. A small amount of cake batter was
baked to test the oven temperature.” That makes perfect sense and
frankly, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how easily these little “test
cakes” could quickly become as popular, if not more so, than the full-size
cakes.
It
is in the making of these little cakes that we see science (chemistry) start to
take center stage. The formula (what baker’s call recipes) are just that,
formulas. And any change to any part of it can have a big impact on the
final product. You can’t simply increase or decrease an ingredient
because that ingredient interacts with the other ingredients in a particular
way.
For
example, the basic traits of a cookie are its crispness, softness, chewiness,
and its spread (does it spread out or hold its shape?). You don’t need to
attend culinary school to know if a cookie is crisp or soft. But you
might need to do a little studying to understand why a cookie has its
particular characteristic – which ingredients and baking method are making it
crisp, or chewy, or soft. It is the science behind the ingredients and
how they interact that determines these characteristics.
Different
ratios of sugar, liquid, and fat (often butter) will have different results and once
you understand them, you will understand how you can tweak a formula to make a cookie more or less crisp, chewy, or soft, without knocking the whole
formula out of whack. A low proportion of liquid but a high amount of
sugar and fat will make a crispy cookie. Flip that around where you have
a high proportion of liquid and low sugar and fat content and you get a soft
cookie. A high sugar and liquid proportion but a low amount of fat and
you get a chewy cookie. You need to keep those proportions intact if you
make any adjustments to the formula otherwise you will change the nature of the
final product.
While
I didn’t set out to, I wound up making two batches of chocolate chip cookies
this week for class. And I’m glad I did because I got to see how
something as simple as how you combine everything together affects the final
product.
The
first batch that I made, I wasn’t really paying attention and I combined
everything using the mixer. I creamed the butter and sugar and then
blended in the eggs using the mixer. Then, I continued with the mixer and
added in the flour and then the chocolate chips. In the back of my mind, I
kept thinking this couldn’t be correct because I know that overworking anything
with flour in it causes toughness. I put the dough in the fridge and went
back to re-watch the instructional video I had watched earlier in the
week. Yup, I was right in that I was doing it wrong.
I
started over from scratch. This time, I only used the mixer to cream the
butter and sugar and to blend in the eggs. Then, I gently folded
in my sifted flour by hand, followed by the chips. I portioned out the
dough, chilled it for about 15 minutes (so that the butter could harden up a
little and the cookie wouldn’t spread out too thin) and baked them. They
were beautiful cookies! Without exaggeration, they were the best chocolate
chip cookies I have ever made. Not just because of flavor (they tasted
like others I’ve made). They were the perfect thickness and had just the
right amount of spread. They were cakey with only a little chewiness to them
and they had a lovely vanilla flavor.
As
a comparison I, I decided to bake a few from the first batch of dough I
made. What a difference! They were very thick and cakey – more like
eating a slice of cake than a cookie – and man, were they tough! No more
or less chewy than the others, but tough. And the crumb was, well,
crumbly. Not enjoyable at all. For the first time in my life, I
threw out cookie dough.
It’s
ok to make mistakes provided you learn from them, and that I did!
That wasn't the only lesson learned this week. I
think the most enlightening thing for me this week is simple and probably
obvious to anyone used to using the metric system: that “milliliters equals
grams”. I always weigh my ingredients (in grams) and I’m almost obsessive
about it – to the point where, in addition to my digital kitchen scale, I have
a small jewelers scale for measuring the smallest amount of something.
I’m usually annoyed when a recipe or formula doesn’t list weights for its ingredients.
Most
recipes and formula today do list weights, in grams, however, some will also list
liquid measurements as milliliters. Yes, that is metric, but it’s not as
accurate as using weight. Another problem (for me at least) is when a
recipe lists a liquid ingredient in grams but the container in the store only
lists milliliters. I wouldn’t know how many cans or bottles I needed to
buy. I assumed you couldn't convert volume measurements to weights (or, if you could, I didn't know how). I was elated to learn a
little secret this week: that whatever amount is listed in milliliters, it
is the same amount in grams! If something calls for 200
milliliters of water, you simply weigh out 200 grams of water!
Finally! One less frustration in the kitchen!
Milliliters
= Grams. My big takeaway for the week!
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| Chocolate Chip Cookies |
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| Chocolate Chips Cookies & Milk |
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