Culturegeeks

Weird. That recipe doesn’t sound significantly different than Toll House or my standby oatmeal chocolate chip. The oatmeal recipe is inherited from a friend of a friend’s grandma (Margi: remember Rick?). The original intent was “oatmeal crisps” but like you I’d rather have ‘em chewy.

I found that they flattened and overcooked more easily when I used melted butter. Now I let the butter get soft enough to be easy to play with, but when butter/sugar is creamed together the consistency is more like soft crisco than slurpee. That mental image is making me gag a little…. I’m sorry.

Baking 14 minutes at 375 seems like the most likely problem, though. That’s a long freakin time for a cookie that’s supposed to be chewy, especially when the dough is going to be a bit loose due to the melted butter.

The oatmeal cookies go 8-10 on 350. I’ve long thought this was a transcription error considering they are supposed to be crispy, but I adjust up depending on how they behave that day (It’s warm here and my oven heats unevenly). Once they get lightly browned on top, they come out of the oven and sit for a minute or two in the pan before being moved to cooling racks. Those cookies stay chewy for at least a day or two. It could be longer, but they usually get scarfed before the research is complete.

d’oh!…..Missed the part in the recipe about chilling the dough before baking. I guess it’s the time, then?

yeah, that melted butter sounded like the culprit to me too…they say that if you put a bit of crisco in (which is, admittedly, gross) that they puff up nicely too.

Diane’s right about the cooking time too…what the hell is up with that?

The first batch, cooked for the specified amount of time, came out just this side of charred. So I adjusted for subsequent batches and they did come out better.

As for the butter, this recipe claims that melting it is the key to a better cookie (albeit in a smaller quantity).

But this article, if it can be considered reliable, makes me wonder if I just didn’t chill the dough long enough. I’m also guilty of microwaving the butter to save time and dishes.

This year will be the first in which we get to stay home and relax, by ourselves, on Christmas Day. I am sorely tempted to spend the day testing cookie dough recipes.

Hmm, I’ll have to try that to believe it. I was always under the impression that if you didn’t melt the butter, as in pie/pastry dough, that there would be little chunks of butter (really, really tiny) that, when heated in the oven, would melt and either expand to make the dough puffier, or just plain melt leaving holes where they were, making the dough airier.

True, that doesn’t sound like a chewy cookie, but I think I’d probably just end up making larger than normal cookies, cranking the heat up a bit, and cooking for less time…the thinking being that the chewy dough is stuff that just didn’t cook all the way through.

My goals for Christmas are to make another apple pie, as I did for thanksgiving, and another pumpkin cheesecake. Both turned out well, but I, in my fullness, told Sara’s parents they could keep the leftovers for when they had company coming over. So, all that work and I had a slice of pie and a slice of cheesecake. I won’t be happy until I’ve fallen asleep with the cheesecake on my lap, with big teeth marks in it.

Do you make your own pie crust?

I do…or did most recently. It actually took two batches last time. I was reading the directions, which said to add like 6-7 Tbsp ice water. So, I did. Mixed everything together, and it seemed really dry. Took it out of the fridge later, and when I took the rolling pin to it, it looked like Robert Patrick in T2 post liquid nitrogen.

So, after reading the instructions closer, it said, “Too much water is better than too little.” Well then, dude, don’t measure out quantities in individual Tbsp, with a +/- of 1.

Next batch went much better. It does, however, make me far less likely to gorge on pie. I mean, there’s a shitload of butter and shortening in that sucker.

I found a good easy way to keep the butter chunks intact for your crust is to throw the flour(s) and very frozen butter into a Cuisinart and pulse it until the butter is pea-sized. My butter always seems to be frozen when I’m starting anyway, (and my whole wheat should be) so using the Cuisinart save a lot of time and effort vs. the rigamarole of thawing BUT NOT MELTING the butter, cutting it in and refreezing it before mixing in the icewater.

Also, if you’ve never made a quiche with a mashed potato crust, I highly recommend it. Just line a pie pan with mashed taters and bake/broil/convect it until it’s lightly browned and pretty dry. Pack it good and high though, because the potatoes contract when they bake and dry.