FOR EVERY CAUSE THERE is an effect. As my staff knows all too well, I say this all the time. In other words, there is no hiding from cutting corners. Here, in this user’s guide to cooking from this book, I explain the methods to my madness.
Pastry chefs hate cup-and-spoon measurements because everyone knows that the quantity of your neighbor’s carefully measured cup of flour will be slightly different than yours. But I taught myself how to bake using the cup-and-spoon approach, and I believe it can be consistent as long as you measure the ingredients the same way every time. (I’m also superstitious.) For the recipes in this book, follow these guidelines.
• For flour and confectioners’ sugar, dip a cup all the way into the storage container. (I recommend keeping flour and confectioners’ sugar in a container with a wide mouth to make this step easy.) Drag the cup through the flour so it is completely full. Lift the full cup out of the bin and then use a flat edge to level off the cup (a plastic bench scraper or a container lid work well). This is sometimes called the dip-and-sweep method. If the product needs to be sifted, sift it after measuring. It is especially important to measure flour this way. One cup of flour obtained by dragging the measuring cup through a storage container has approximately 15 grams (½ ounce)—the equivalent of 2 tablespoons—more flour than 1 cup of flour obtained by spooning the flour into the cup.
• For cane and granulated sugars, level off a mounded cup with a straight edge.
• For brown and muscovado sugars, pack the sugar in the cup snugly.
• When measuring
baking soda and
baking powder with teaspoons, level off the measuring spoons.
• With salt or vanilla, you don’t have to be as diligent—I often prefer mounded teaspoons of salt (especially when using Murray River salt), and I have never hurt anything by adding an extra splash of vanilla
extract.
• When measuring liquid ingredients, use a liquid measuring cup. That’s what it’s designed for, end of story.
This is where you form that all-important matrix between butter and sugar that adds structure to the cookie. Details matter. If the butter is too cold, the butter and sugar won’t aerate successfully unless you run the mixer long enough for the butter to warm up.
If your butter is too soft, your cookies will be greasy. If you don’t aerate the butter enough, the texture of the cookies will be dense. For all of the recipes in this book that require creaming butter with sugar, follow these guidelines.
1. Start with butter between 64°F and 68°F, the ideal “room temperature” range for malleable butter. The first thing I do when I enter my kitchen is pull butter from the refrigerator so it can warm up to room temperature. Malleable butter is soft enough to hold a dent if pressed but not so soft that it melts in its wrapper. If you really want to know the exact temperature, stab a thermometer into the center of a stick of butter.
2. Briefly mix the butter in the bowl of the stand mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed before adding the sugar. This cuts down on the total amount of time needed for creaming the butter and sugar. If the butter breaks into smaller pieces, the butter is still too cold for creaming.
3. Add the sugar and continue to mix on medium speed until the butter and sugar transform from grainy to light and voluminous. This can take as little as 3 minutes or as long as 6 minutes, depending on the temperature of the butter and the kitchen. If the butter is at room temperature and has been mixed before the sugar is added, you will not have to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl with a rubber spatula until right before adding the eggs. If the butter starts to melt along the sides of the bowl (this can happen on hot days in the kitchen), place the bowl in the refrigerator for approximately 10 minutes, then remove the bowl and continue to mix.
Once I’ve created this aerated butter-sugar matrix, I don’t want to ruin it by carelessly mixing in the other ingredients. I add eggs one at a time and mix briefly in between each addition. After adding the eggs, the batter looks broken, resembling cottage cheese. That’s okay. I don’t want to beat it furiously at this point. Then it’s time for the dry ingredients. In many recipes in this book, I add the flour—which has already been mixed with salt and leavening agents, when necessary—all at once. If the mixing bowl is very full and you want to avoid flour flying out of the bowl when you turn on the mixer, pulse it on and off on low speed a few times. Then I mix the flour on low speed just until the dough comes together in one shaggy mass. I remove the bowl from the mixer, grab my handy plastic bench scraper, and manually bring the dough together by folding it gently over itself a few times. By mixing the dough by hand at the end, I lessen the risk of overmixing it and making tough cookies.
I refrigerate cookie dough all the time. It is convenient, especially when a recipe has other components that require cooking. And it greatly improves the texture of some cookies. See the difference for yourself: make
Classic Chocolate Chip Cookie dough. Bake half of the dough right away. Refrigerate the remaining dough and bake it the next day. There is no comparison. Refrigerating the dough gives the flour time to hydrate and allows its proteins and starches to break down, which—through some scientific magic—leads to a more caramelized, delicious result. Refrigerating dough even works with some egg white cookies that don’t contain flour. The batter for the
Ode to the Chunky Bar cookies dramatically improves when refrigerated overnight, becoming smooth and pliable.
Chilling dough is crucial in recipes that require rolling out the dough before cutting it, as is the case with shortbread, rugelach, and kolachkes. I sometimes refrigerate the dough before I roll it out, and I always refrigerate it after I do. This allows the glutens to relax so the cookies don’t shrink up when baked. If I have rolled out several sheets of dough, I stack them all on the same pan, separated in between layers of parchment paper, and slide the whole pan into the refrigerator. If you have a side-by-side refrigerator at home, you may have to chill the half sheet pan filled with stacked dough in a large cooler. Or you can slice the dough in half and chill it on pans small enough to fit in the refrigerator.
Sometimes the dough can be too cold out of the fridge. If it starts to crack, I let it warm up a bit before
proceeding. If the dough becomes too warm while I am cutting it, I stick it right back into the fridge for several minutes.
All ovens—no matter how fancy—have hotspots. We tested these cookies using the deck oven at Hot Chocolate as well as a variety of electric- and gas-powered ovens in home kitchens, monitoring
temperatures with oven thermometers. What we learned is to never trust that an oven is telling the truth about its internal temperature. Some ovens take much longer to heat than others. When a light or beep indicates an oven has reached the desired internal temperature, it can be off by as much as 100°F. Ovens also cycle on and off to maintain a consistent internal temperature. If you’ve never checked your oven temperature for accuracy, hang an oven thermometer in the oven before heating it. There can be lag time between when an oven beeps to announce it has reached the desired temperature and the oven thermometer’s reading, so let it preheat for a good long while before giving it a final read. If your oven is cooler or hotter than the temperature needed, adjust it before baking your first sheet pan of cookies.
Ovens brown cookies at different rates, too. If your cookies brown too quickly, try baking them at 25°F lower than the recipe suggests. If your cookies never seem to brown, raise the temperature by 25°F.
If your oven has a convection option, lucky you. Baking cookies with convection heat means the cookies bake evenly and faster. It is especially great for drop cookies because a faster cooking time prevents the cookies from drying out. If your oven has a convection option and you prefer to use it for baking cookies, a general rule of thumb is to lower the temperature in the recipe by 25°F and monitor the pan closely—you may need to shave off a few minutes of baking time.
To ensure that each sheet pan of cookies has the best chance of an even browning, I arrange the oven racks so one is positioned in the center and I bake one pan at a time. When the cookies have baked long enough for the edges to set, 8 or 10 minutes in most cases, I rotate the pan 180 degrees and continue to bake until done.
If you need to bake multiple pans and you only have one or two sheet pans, let them cool down before reloading. If you run out of cool sheet pans, you can portion cookies directly onto a piece of parchment paper on a work surface. Some cookie doughs bake better when chilled, such as shortbread and spritz, so plan accordingly. When one pan is in the oven, have another in the refrigerator filled with chilled, portioned dough. If cool sheet pans still are a problem and you need to chill the dough, get creative and use a cutting board or similar flat surface to transfer a sheet of parchment paper filled with dough to the refrigerator.
Part of the craft of making cookies is being thoughtful in how you let them cool. When cookies are left on a hot sheet pan after they are pulled out of the oven, they continue to bake. This carryover baking can make or break a great cookie. Some cookies, like shortbread, need to cool directly on the sheet pan so they have time to firm up. Others, such as many drop cookies and rugelach, dry out when left on the sheet pan or stick to the parchment paper. For most drop cookies, rugelach, and kolachkes, I transfer them to cooling racks within a minute or two after pulling them from the oven.
When
melting chocolate, I build my own double boiler out of the pots and bowls that are readily available in my kitchen. I fill a pot with an inch or two of water and fit a stainless steel bowl two-thirds of the way into the pot. The water should not touch the bottom of the bowl. While I’m gathering my ingredients for a recipe, I bring the pot to a boil. Then I lower the heat to a gentle simmer, add the chocolate to the bowl, and let it melt.
On the rare occasion, I set up the double boiler so that the water touches the bottom of the bowl. I do this when making custard for the
Peaches and Cream Thumbprints because it cooks the custard faster without sacrificing quality.
When I finish cookies by
dipping a corner or side into melted chocolate, I melt the chocolate in a microwave instead of a double boiler because the chocolate seems to set up and cool faster. Use the half-power setting and heat in 30-second intervals to avoid scorching the chocolate. It usually takes a minute or two, tops.
I use a parchment paper lid when I want to minimize contact with the air and slow down evaporation. In this book, I use one when making Red Wine and Ginger Pear Butter and Kumquat Marmalade. To make a lid, fold a half sheet (13 by 18-inch) piece of parchment paper into quarters. Fold it again so that the center of the parchment paper is the tip of the triangle. Hold the triangle with the tip facing in the center of the pot you plan to use to ensure that the triangle is longer than the radius of the pot. Trim the end of the triangle to fit the pot. Snip off the tip of the triangle. Unfold the paper and you should have a round piece with a small hole in the center to allow for some evaporation. It should fit easily into the pot directly on the fruit you’re cooking.
When Kate, my writer on this book, asked if I used an offset spatula for spreading the frosting for my sandwich cookies, I said no. I am a pastry chef. I use a
pastry bag, not only to frost sandwich cookies but also to shape and portion spritz cookies and egg white cookies. It is a neater process and it gives the cookies a finished look.
With a little practice, it is not difficult to handle a pastry bag. Follow these tips:
1.
Prepare the bag: If you are using plastic disposable bags, snip the tip of a bag before fitting the tip. Depending on the tip, it can be as little as ½ inch or as much as 1 inch. The tip should fit comfortably but snugly into the end of the bag, without any gaps between the bag and the metal. If you are not sure how much bag to snip off, err on the cautious side—you can always snip off more if the tip doesn’t fit. If you are using a 14- or 16-inch reusable pastry bag, the end of the bag should already have a hole designed to fit the pastry tip. If you are using a small tip (such as Ateco 35, 46, 85, or 150), it is nice to use a
coupler for added reinforcement.
2.
Fill the bag: Fold over the wide end of the bag to form a cuff. Hold the bag in one hand like an ice cream cone. Using a rubber spatula, fill the bag approximately half full with your free hand. It is easier to pipe when the bag isn’t completely full, especially when making
spritz cookies. Squeeze out excess air from the bag and twist the end closed directly above the batter. This is what I call “burping” the bag.
3.
Pipe: Gather the twisted end with your dominant hand. Pressing from the end of the bag, begin to pipe out the batter or frosting while using the tips of your fingers on your free hand to guide the tip. The key to piping consistently, especially when baking
Milanos is to hold the
tip at the same distance from the
parchment paper throughout the process. If the dough does not release from the tip, drag the tip gently over the surface of the cookie. To pipe frosting “bubbles,” which I do when filling some of the sandwich cookies (
pictured), I hold the tip at a 90-degree angle in the center of the cookie close to the surface. Then I pipe out the frosting until it forms a round “bubble.” When it is time to refill the bag, untwist the bag and repeat the filling process.
Giving cookies a quick dip in chocolate provides a professional polish. At Hot Chocolate, I put a bowl of chocolate on top of the deck oven, where it melts to the perfect consistency for dipping cookies. At home, using a microwave or a
double boiler to melt the chocolate works, too. It is important not to be stingy with how much chocolate you melt down for dipping—trying to dip cookies into a shallow bowl of chocolate is frustrating; it makes it hard to get an elegant edge of chocolate. Keep the chocolate liquid throughout the dipping process. If left with extra, spread it onto an inverted sheet pan lined with parchment paper and freeze it into a sheet, like I do in the recipes for
Dream Bars and
Julie’s Mandelbrodt.
Before you start dipping cookies, have a sheet pan or two lined with parchment paper handy. Sometimes I dip the cookies a third of the way in, sometimes only a quarter in, and sometimes at an angle. Once you’ve dipped the cookie, use the edge of the bowl to scrape off the excess chocolate. Then give the cookie a shake. This minimizes the chocolate from forming puddles around the cookies. Place the cookies on the prepared pan. If you are adding a garnish to the chocolate—like jimmies—sprinkle it on the chocolate before it starts to solidify. If the garnish is very fine, like ground toffee, I dip the chocolate directly in it.
Once all of the cookies have been dipped and decorated, put the pan in the refrigerator to let the chocolate set up completely. Store dipped cookies in the refrigerator in an airtight container.