Cookie Topic: I sent email to my mother asking for my late grandmother's chocolate chip cookie recipe. Although she insists Grandma used the recipe from the yellow bag of chocolate chips, nobody has ever been able to duplicate them (IMO). She took them with her when she left. In place of that, my mom sent the following (rather detailed) reply. Thanks Mom!
Well, I tried to find you a chocolate chip cookie recipe but the cook books all say to use the one on the chocolate chip bag. Mom used the ones in the yellow bag...Nestles, I think. There was a huge article about baking cookies that I read somewhere in the past month. I thought maybe in the paper, but I looked through all the food sections we still had in the garage and it was not there.
So either it was in earlier and the papers went to the recycler or
it was in a magazine that I don't have anymore. If I do locate it
I'll send it because it is very interesting. It tells that whether they turn out soft or crunchy depends on such variables as how much liquid is in them, and how much fat. Anyway, go get a bag of Nestles chips and follow the recipe. If you like them in little mounds that are chewy, add a little water. I think the recipe says a
tablespoon of water anyway.
Mom may have used light brown sugar. I use dark brown.
So if hers were different than mine, maybe that's the diff.
AHA!!! I just figured out where I had read about the choc. chip
cookies...it was a December 1995 Sunset Magazine that B. Hallmark threw in with a stack of old Saturday Evening Posts she gave me last week!!
Here are two recipes from them:
1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 c. (1/4 lb) butter or margarine at room temp.) not sure which one
Grandma used
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg
1 pkg. or 1 cup choc. chips
1/2 c. chopped nuts
Mix flour, baking soda and salt. Beat butter, sugar and vanilla with mixer on medium speed until well blended. Beat in egg, mixing well. Add flour mixture, and beat slowly to incorporate, then beat to blend well. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts. Drop on cookie sheets and bake in a 400 degree oven till edges are brown but an area about 1 inch wide in the center is still pale. 6 to 7 minutes. Let cool on pan about 5 min., transfer to racks with spatula. Store airtight up to 8 hours, or freeze for longer storage.
For thin, crisp chocolate chip cookies:
1 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup melted butter or margarine
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla]1 cup choc. chips
1/2 c. nuts
Mix flour, soda and salt.
With mixer on medium speed, beat butter, sugars and 3 tablewpoons water and vanilla till blended. Stir flour mixture into butter mixture, then beat until blended. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts. Drop batter onto baking skeets, bake in a 300 degree oven till an even golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes.
NOTE: Neither of these is Grandma's recipe from the Nestles bag!
To go on:
Thin crisp and CHEWY choc. chip cookies, bake as with thin crisp ones only about 14 minutes, while an area about 1 inch in the center is still pale.
for Thick, crunchy chocolate chip cookies:
make thin crisp recipe, increasing butter to 2/3 c. and omitting water. Dough will be dry and crumbly. Pinch into lumps and bake 18-20 minutes.
Explanation:
Why are chocolate chip cookies soft and chewy one time, thin and crisp
another? Why do soft cookies get hard, and crisp cookies get soft?
Answer: soft and chewy, dense and thick, thin and crisp are adjectives
often used in pairs, even trios, to describe the ideal cookie. Clearly, perfection in a cookie is a matter of individual preference. And no cookie is judged more closely and more frequently than the chocolate chip. The burning issue is how to make the cookie turn out the way you want, every time. Curiously, most cookswho asked for help use the ssame recipe. The one on the back of the Nestle chocolate chip bag. It's a reliable recipe, but subtle changes produce surprising differences. To determine which factors influence the final cookie, they used the wrapper recipe and baked more than 25 variations. Each batch was slightly different, and changes in proportions, mixing methods and baking were carefully control. The goal was to learn how to make the cookie that matches your favorite adjectives.
What makes cookies soft and chewy?
High moisture content does: so the recipe, baking time and temperature must be adjusted to retain moisture. Binding the water in butter, eggs, and brown sugar (it contains molasses, which is 10 % water) with flour slows its evaporation. The dough needs a little extra flour, which makes it stiffer. The stiff dough spreads less, less liquid evaporates and the cookies are thicker. Mass also helps cookies stay moist...big dollops of dough make softer and chewier cookies than tiny spoonfuls of dough. Bake these thick cookies for a shorter time at a high temperature to firm them quickly and minimuze spreading. Most important, don't bake them too long. Remove from the oven when the cookie rim is brown and at least 1/3 of the center top remains pale. The cooked centers will be soft.
What makes a cookie crisp or crunch? reducing the amount of ingredients that hold moisture...flour, egg and brown sugar...makes it easy for liquid to evaporate, producing crisp cookies. The fat goes up proportionately when other ingredients are cut back. It gets hotter than the water in the dough and drives out the moisture. Fat also makes the dough softer and melts when hot, making the cookies spread. For crispness, bake longer at lower temperature so they dry , spread and brown evenly to develop the toasty flavor and crisp texture throughout.
What else makes cookies spread flat as they bake?
Most often the culprit is low fat butter or margarine. It has about
20 % more water. The extra liquid causes this problem. Low fat products cannot be used interchangeably with regular fats for baking.
Cookies also spread when you drop high fat dough onto a hot baking sheet. The heat melts the dough and the cookies spread before they are baked enough to hold their shape.
When others follow my recipe for chocolate chip cookies they turn out
crunch. Mine turn out chewy. WHY?
The way they measure ingredients and the real temperature of their ovens are the usual reasons cooks get different results from the same recipe. Flour should be stirred to loosen and fluff it, then spooned gently into a dry measure cup..the kind you fill to the rim, and the top scraped level. If you tap the cup or scoop flour from the bag, the flour gets packed down and you can easily add 2 to 4 extra taablespoons flour per cup. You can scoop up white sugar; it doesn't pack. But you should firmly pack brown sugar into a dry measure cup and scrape the top level. Dry ingredients should not be measured in heaped-up cups or spoons; scrape dry ingredients level with the surface of a measuring tool. Measure liquid ingredients with liquid measuring cups. If your cookies bake faster or slower than the
recipe indicates they should, chances are your oven thermometer isn't
registering accurately. It's a good idea to double check oven temp with a thermometer and adjust oven setting as needed.
THERE. NOW READ ALL THIS CAREFULLY, AND APPRECIATE THE TIME
AND EFFORT THAT WENT INTO TYPING IT FOR YOU. Love, Mom |
