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Cookies Perfected: Fantastic Basics, Tips and Troubleshooting

Click the link below to find the original page. This is fantastic overview that brings a little science to the art of cookie baking.

Perfect Cookies

By: Allrecipes Staff

Some cookies should be crisp and delicate, while others ought to be chewy and tender.

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Ingredients

Using the correct ingredients is key. Follow the recipe closely and measure ingredients carefully for best results.

Fats Cookies are made primarily with butter, margarine or shortening. Fats play a major role in the spread of a cookie--whether a cookie keeps its shape or flattens in the oven. Shortening and margarine are stable, and will help cookies keep their original unbaked shapes. Butter melts at a much lower temperature than other solid fats--it melts at body temperature, resulting in a “melt-in-your-mouth” burst of flavor. Cookies made with butter tend to spread out. Butter is essential in certain cookies, such as shortbreads; if they don’t hold their shape, consider lowering the amount of butter, sugar, or baking soda in the recipe. The amount of fat also affects the cookies: in general, more fat equals flat, crispy cookies while less fat equals puffier, cake-like cookies. Whipped spreads are not suitable for baking: use solid sticks of margarine instead.

Flour Flour also affects how cookies behave. Most cookie recipes call for all-purpose or pastry flour. Both bread flour, with its high protein content, and cake flour, which is high in starch, produce cookies that tend to spread less. (The gluten in the bread flour and the absorbant starch in cake flour are responsible for the similar results.) Higher flour-to-liquid ratios are needed in shortbread and crumbly-textured cookies.

Baking Powder and Baking Soda Baking powder and baking soda are the two most common leaveners in cookies. Baking soda is simply bicarbonate of soda, while baking powder is a combination of bicarbonate of soda plus cream of tartar, an acidic ingredient. Baking soda neutralizes the acidity of the dough, allowing the cookies to brown in the oven. Since baking powder already contains its own acid, it will not reduce the acidity in the dough, and the resulting cookies will be puffier and lighter in color.

Sugars Like fats, sugars liquefy in the oven. The type and amount of sugar used play a big role in cookie performance. White sugar makes a crisper cookie than brown sugar or honey. Cookies made from brown sugar will absorb moisture after baking, helping to ensure that they stay chewy. Most chocolate chip cookie recipes contain both brown and white sugars. If you lower the amount of sugar called for in a cookie recipe, the final baked cookie will be puffier than its high-sugar counterpart.

Eggs and Liquids Eggs are a binding agent. Liquids can either cause cookies to puff up or spread. If egg is the liquid, it will create a puffy, cake-like texture. Just a tablespoon or two of water or other liquid will help your cookies spread into flatter and crisper rounds. Egg yolks bind the dough and add richness but allow a crisp texture after baking, whereas egg whites tend to make cookies dry and cakey. To make up for the drying effect of the egg whites, extra sugar is often added. This is why cookies made with just egg whites tend to be so sweet--think of macaroons.

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Mixing

Cookies are not as delicate as cakes, but proper mixing is still important. Some recipes require a creaming step in which the fat and sugars are beaten together until light-colored and fluffy. Other cookies require a sandy texture, so the fat is cut into the flour. Over-mixing can incorporate too much air into the dough, resulting in flat, overly spread-out cookies. Follow the recipe instructions. Once you combine the dry and wet ingredients, mix until just combined.

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Temperature

Unless otherwise specified, ingredients should be at room temperature before mixing. Cookie dough that is chilled before baking will hold its shape better. Rolled and cut-out cookies should be refrigerated before baking for sharper, clearer edges. Drop cookies, such as chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies, can be at room temperature before baking; the spoonfuls of dough will spread and flatten out to the desired result.

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Equipment and Baking

Different baking sheets and ovens produce different results. Thin baking sheets may allow the bottoms to brown too fast. Special insulated baking sheets allow air movement and help cookies bake evenly, but they can be expensive. Semi-thick rimmed baking sheets--also called jellyroll pans--are available just about everywhere, and are a fine multipurpose baking choice. Rather than greasing each baking sheet, consider investing in a roll of parchment paper or a nonstick pan liner to make cookie removal and clean-up easy.

Follow the recipe’s instructions for baking. Invest in an oven thermometer to be sure your oven temperature is calibrated correctly. Generally, cookies are baked in a moderate oven--350 degrees F (175 degrees C)--for 8 to 12 minutes, depending on the size of the cookie. For chewy cookies, allow them to cool on the pan for 3 to 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. For crispier cookies, let cool for one minute on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack.

Troubleshooting

If you have a cookie recipe that you love, but aren’t getting the desired results, use these tips to get your perfect cookie:

• Flat If you want your cookies on the flat side, you can do some or all of the following things: Use all butter, use all-purpose flour or bread flour, increase the sugar content slightly, add a bit of liquid to your dough, and bring the dough to room temperature before baking.
• Puffy For light, puffy cookies, use shortening or margarine and cut back on the amount of fat; add an egg, cut back on the sugar, use cake flour or pastry flour, use baking powder instead of baking soda and refrigerate your dough before baking.
• Chewy Try melting the butter before adding it to the sugars when mixing. Remove cookies from the oven a few minutes before they are done, while their centers are still soft but are just cooked through. The edges should be golden. Use brown sugar, honey or molasses as a sweetener. Let cookies cool on the pan for several minutes after baking before transferring to cooling rack.
• Crispy For crisp, crunchy cookies, use all butter and a proportion of white sugar. Use egg yolks in place of a whole egg. Cookies should be baked completely. Let cool on the baking sheet for one minute before transferring to a cooling rack.

The ingredients, mixing techniques and baking temperature all affect how a batch of cookies will turn out.

Turkey Carving Demo by Washington Post

This is a great 6 min tutorial on how to carve a turkey cleanly. Master this and look like the pro you will be.

Turkey prep goes technical

Cooking calculations and conversions from Butterball, that incidentally may be helpful with cooking turkeys, but are generally helpful as a cooking resource. There are also specific turkey-cooking tips and tricks, too: how long to thaw, portion calculators, how long to cook and even the turkey-talk hotline. An alternate to a suicide hotline. On Thanksgiving.

Another website, eatturkey.com, gives resources to cook your birdie in a convection oven/convection setting. The benefits, according to the site are that the turkey will "cook in less time with more even results when a convection oven is used. The convection oven circulates preheated air around the oven cavity for faster and more even cooking." The site has some other useful resources such as recipes for the average cook, cooking demonstrations (on every turkey variation you can dream: turkey chowder? grilled turkey chop? turkey meatloaf? and some other more "traditional" favorites...), and some seriously expert recipes (ie not for picky palates).

I would LOVE to find the perfect turkey recipe.

Turkey tips

This comes from toytowngermany.com discussion forums. Going to try it, assuming I can actually find a bird!

*My modifications: do a 20 hour brine bath, do a spice rub, then instead of covering with butter, put butter pads, lemons and oranges under skin, covering the whole backside of the turkey.*

Cooking a turkey is really simple. People get scared about it because of horror stories involving people buying frozen turkeys, andnot getting them out of the freezer early enough to thaw.

If you want a foolproof, step by step recipe, PM me, and I will put you on the right track.

Basically, the simplest way to roast a turkey is as follows:

Get turkey, give it a clean inside and out, and dry with kitchen towels.
Stuff the bird (this is only if you want stuffing of course, and yes I can also supply millions of recipes for that sort of thing, but just look on the web)

Smother the skin with butter. Remember that butter is hard in the fridge, so take some out 30 minutes before you wanna use it so it softens.

Put turkey in a roasting tin, breast side up (there is a school of though that says you should roast it on its back for half the time to produce a juicier meat, but forget it - the turkey will be butter basted anyway)

Weigh the bird, and put in into a roasting dish, and cover loosely with foil. Cook for about 20 minutes per pound (or 20 minutes per half kilo) at about 180 degrees in your oven - every 1 hour you should take out the bird, and baste it with the juices in the pan.

1 hour before the end, pour away the excess fat from the pan, and half an hour befoire the end remove the foil so that the skin can brown up nicely.

Now stick a skewer or small blade into the turkey thigh. If the juices run clear, you are OK; if they are atall pink, put back into the over for 15 minutes, and test again.

When the juices are clear (and the bird therefore done) cover TIGHTLY with foil, and leave to rest for 15 - 30 minutes before carving. This helps the meat relax after the hot oven, and will produce more tender meat. Also, it will be easier to carve!

Done. Or as a certain mockney prat witha tongue thats too big for his mouth would say, 'pukka'. Thats about it really, it is very simple. You can do other stuff of course. I get loads of bacon rashers, hammer them out to make them thinner, and build a latticework of bacon over the breast. Nobody ever sees this, as I do it as a chefs treat, and eat the bacon in a sandwich! No better way that I know off to cook bacon than to roast it on a turkey.

Purrfect scramblers?

I really can't stand gooey eggs; not even sure if I like really moist eggs, if it means they aren't cooked thoroughly. Which is all the more reason to try this spot of advice: the bad-mouthed Gordon Ramsey's how-to on delightful scrambled eggs. Mr. Handsome eats anything I make, but can be discerning when it comes to "liking" certain foods (and complimenting them). Eggs are one such example where he knows what he likes. I'm all for fluffy, so long as it doesn't come at the expense of being runny.

Memory trick: How many 'X' in an 'X'?

This clever diagram illustrates the "gallon-eating-the-quarts" trick.

So there are:

2 Cups in a Pint
2 Pints in a Quart
4 Quarts in a Gallon

And so two "C's" fit inside a "P," two "P's" fit inside a "Q," and four "Q's" fit inside a big, enormous "G."

It's like "the woman who swallowed a fly" for cups and quarts!

It still takes a few minutes of mental visualization, but with this diagram in mind, you can easily figure out that there are four cups in a quart, 16 cups in a gallon, and so on.

This clever one comes from here:

Now if I can only find this for the European measuring system in liters!

e-Ahead Cookies Like Money in the Bank

Homemade cookies are in high demand during the holiday season, but few of us can fit lengthy bake-a-thons into already cramped schedules. So we procrastinate, and often what could be a pleasant, family-friendly baking session turns into a grueling marathon. Or, we splurge on pricey gourmet treats that rarely taste as good as they look.

This year, consider a new approach. In between making those lists and checking them twice, take a few minutes to mix up some favorite cookie recipes and stash the treats in your freezer. By following a few simple rules, you'll have home-baked cookies on hand anytime.

A number of Web sites offer suggestions on storing and freezing cookies. A few of the more helpful ones include www.fareshare.net, www.allrecipes.com and www.stretcher.com. Below is the basic information you'll need to get started:

-Both cookie dough and baked cookies are candidates for the freezer. But keep this in mind: crisp cookies freeze better than soft ones, with the exception of brownies and bar-type cookies. (Forget meringues.)

-Follow the time frame recommended by experts. Unfrosted baked cookies will hold up well in the freezer for as long as six to 12 months; the limit for frosted baked cookies is two to three months. Cookie dough usually has a much shorter freezer life, four to six weeks.

-For best results, rolls of dough should be sealed tightly in plastic wrap. Store other types of dough in airtight containers. Unbaked drop cookies can be frozen on cookie sheets and transferred to a freezer bag. Whatever method you use, remember that dough will absorb freezer odors if not properly wrapped. When you're ready to bake, simply let the dough defrost in the refrigerator, then proceed.

-Freezing baked cookies will preserve their freshness. But as with unbaked dough, proper wrapping is important. Put wax paper between layers of cookies before stashing in a tightly sealed tin or coffee can. To serve, let cookies come to room temperature or zap for about 30 seconds in the microwave.

-Label each container with the date and type of cookie or cookie dough.

Now, a few recipes that are particularly freezer-friendly.

HOLIDAY THUMBPRINT COOKIES

1 cup butter or margarine

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1-1/4 teaspoons vanilla

1-3/4 cups flour

1-1/2 cups Post Raisin Bran cereal

3/4 cup jam or preserves

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat butter in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed to soften. Gradually add powdered sugar and salt, beating until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla. Stir in flour and cereal. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheets. Make an indentation in center of each ball. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from cookie sheets and cool on wire racks. Fill indentations with jam and sprinkle with additional powdered sugar if desired.

Kraft Foods

NEIMAN MARCUS CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-3/4 cups flour

1-1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder, slightly crushed

8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a large cookie sheet. In a large bowl, combine butter and sugars. Using an electric mixer, beat until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. In a medium bowl, combine baking soda, baking powder, salt, flour and espresso powder. Stir to mix and add to butter mixture, using a spatula or wooden spoon to combine ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop dough by rounded tablespoons (or more) onto prepared cookie sheet several inches apart. Bake eight to 10 minutes for a soft cookie, 10 to 12 minutes for a crisper cookie.

Neiman Marcus

SNICKERDOODLES

1 cup butter

1-1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2-3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Cinnamon

Sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, cream together butter, sugar and eggs. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Refrigerate dough for an hour or two to chill. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls. Roll each ball in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

www.stretcher.com

SPICED CHOCOLATE TEA COOKIES

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg or ground cardamom

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg yolk

1/3 cup milk

Sifted powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, stir together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and nutmeg or cardamom. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat butter with electric mixer on medium to high for 30 seconds. Add sugar; beat until combined. Beat in the egg yolk until combined. Add about half of the flour mixture and the milk; beat until combined. Beat or stir in remaining ingredients. Spoon dough into a pastry bag fitted with a large (1/2-inch) open star tip. Pipe dough into 1-1/2-inch shell shapes two inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until firm and bottoms are browned.

Better Homes & Gardens

HONEY-PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1 cup honey

2 eggs

3 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine shortening, peanut butter, honey, eggs, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Roll into balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten with fork dipped in flour. Bake for eight to 10 minutes.