Cooking tips, tricks, and advice from professional kitchens
Cookies
Making great double chocolate chip cookies
Nov 24th
I don’t love the taste of cocoa powder, as I find it distinctively different from chocolate, so I thought I’d give a couple of tips about double chocolate cookies that use it differently or not at all.
1.) Replace it. But with what you say? Place your chocolate chips or chunks in a food processor and pulse until there are still chunks left but you have some dust in the bowl. Alternatively blitz some extra chips to dust. Use this to replace the cocoa powder in your recipe and the result will not have the cocoa powder colour, but it will have a more chocolately taste.
2.) If you want to use cocoa powder, try creaming it into the butter with the sugar. This will sort of make chocolate as the cocoa powder is chocolate with the cocoa butter removed and then ground to a dust. Mixing it with fat will give a more chocolatey taste and still give the dark colour people associate with double chocolate cookies.
What is the best type of flour for extra light cookies?
Nov 24th
Q. What is the best type of flour for extra light cookies?
A. There are several tricks to light and fluffy cookies. The first is to make sure you’re using the right kind of leavener.
Ammonium Bicarbonate isn’t common, but it is used a lot in Christmas cookies such as gingerbread or Lebkuchen. It has one feature over all the other leaveners out there; it will make your cookies crisp.
Using fresh baking powder and/or soda will help a lot, as then they will be in correct proportion to your other ingredients.
In terms of types of flour, you probably want to go with a cake or pastry flour. These flours will feel more dense in your hands and weigh a little bit more per cup than other flours but they have the lowest protein content. A less protein rich flour will allow for less gluten development giving you a less dense cookie. That said, using the correct type of flour will only help if it is used correctly.
Don’t overwork your dough. Overworked dough is the most common cause of dense cookies. If you’ve done all this and your cookies are still little rocks, check the recipe to see what the ratio of fat to other ingredients is. It should be about 20-30% of the total weight. Much less than this and there’s not much chance of a light cookie. Much more than this and it will be too dense to leaven.
Spacing cookies in an interlocking pattern
Jul 11th
Placing items such as cookies or scones on a baking tray in an interlocking pattern can enable you to bake more at a time, and with a more evenly shaped result. As the cookies spread, if not interlocked, they may spread into each other leaving you with blob shaped cookies. Interlocking makes the best use of the space on the cookie sheet so you can fit the maximum number of cookies on the tray and still have then be nice and round.
Rescuing Over-Baked Cookies
Jun 18th
Slightly over baked cookies can sometimes be rescued from being too dry and crunchy by placing them in an airtight tub before they are fully cooled. Placing hot, fresh-from-the-oven cookies on a wire rack to cool allows cool air to circulate around them finishing the baking (drying) process. Putting them in a tub will not allow the moisture to go anywhere other than back into the cookies. If you use this trick you may notice a slightly shorter shelf life than usual.
A few tips for flavouring shortbread
May 26th
For citrus flavours, you have 2 basic options, oils or zests. Since no liquid is added to shortbread dough, it’s not really a good idea to add citrus juice to it. The best way to get the flavours are by adding the dry zest, but be sure not to zest to deeply as the white pith is very bitter and doesn’t really have that much citrus flavour.
I reccomend using a microplane zester ( Such as this Microplane Stainless Steel Zester
Another option is to use citrus oils, though only ones that say they are for food, as many oils are used for cleaning. These will not leave small pieces of zest in the cookies, which are usually too small to feel in the mouth, but some people may not care for them. They aren’t that easy to find, aren’t cheap, but will not colour the cookies in any way.
For chocolate shortbread, chips or chunks work best, but they will make the dough difficult to slice and fairly impossible to roll evenly. If slicing chocolate chunk or chip shortbread dough, it is best to be patient and use a serated slicing knife. It is also helpful to thoroughly chill the dough before attempting to slice, as the textures of refrigerated chocolate and shortbread dough are much more similar than their textures at room temperatures.
For shortbread with nuts, most of the same tips apply as above. It is better to use whole or roughly chopped nuts in shortbread as adding ground nuts will change the texture of the dough and may make the final cookies not hold together too well. It is also helpful in this instance to chill the dough before slicing.
Make slicing biscotti easier
May 12th
When baking biscotti, it is helpful to slightly underbake the logs on the first bake to enable easier slicing. The perfect time to take the biscotti out is right after they begin to firm up and colour. Once sliced, dry the biscotti at a very low temperature; around 225F. It will take longer, but you’ll end up with a more evenly dried and coloured and product.
Shortbread tips
Nov 21st
Tip 1. When rolling out the shortbread, or any type of cookie for that matter, to ensure an even thickness across whatever you’re rolling, it’s helpful to have 2 strips (say like an old wooden board) of whatever thickness you want your cookies to be. Place the boards on either side of the dough and roll onto them. This will ensure that you get exactaly the same thickeness no matter how many pieces of dough you roll, and that the dough won’t get thinner at the edges where more pressure is applied. If this is something you make a lot, you can even mark the size of your cookies onto the planks and cut using those guidelines.
2. If you want to sugar your shortbread. There are 2 options both with their own pros and cons. You can lightly brush the surfaces with an egg white and then dust them with sugar. This method uses the additional materials of an egg white, which if you’re in a commercial setting is no problem, but at home it can be more of a hassle than it’s worth. So, another method is to dust the cookies with sugar straight after they’ve come out of the oven. This only coats the top surface, but it doesn’t require any extra materials.
Flavored Brandy Snaps
Nov 21st
When making brandy snaps, and you want to switch things up a little bit, you can substitute the sugar for a fruit puree. For example if your recipe calls for 250g sugar, replace that with 250g of say passionfruit puree, or strawberry puree. The method is still the same. It’s probably best to do this on a recipe that is spread, rather than cut and melts in the oven. The end result is a subtle flavour difference and a minimal colour change depending on the strength of the puree.
