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Some books on baking warn you not to attempt meringues on a humid day. Why?
Meringues are high in sugar and sugar absorbs moisture from the air. When the air is humid, they
absorb more moisture and the egg foam becomes too wet. There is no good solution to avoid the
problem.
Cookies and Bars
Of all the dessert items, cookies and bars (or squares, depending on the shape you cut them
into) are the most popular with home cooks. The reasons, first, they have the widest latitude for
error of all baked sweets, so they turn out fine even with mistakes, and second, they are the most
popular everyday dessert with the exception of ice cream. Easy or not, in some kitchens these end
up barely edible. Carelessness, inattention, inexperience, poor-quality ingredients or incorrect oven
temperature can all result in a cookie or bar that is hard to serve without apologies.
The most common cookies and bars, like chocolate chip cookies and brownies, are high in
sugar and fat but low in moisture and eggs. You need little or no leavening since a chewy but soft
consistency or crispness are your goals.
Ingredients
The basic ingredients for both cookies and bars are simple: flour, fat, sugar, eggs and salt.
The liquid is often milk. What makes each type different is the added flavoring and the way you
shape and finish them.
As with all desserts containing flour, you don't want to develop the gluten in cookie dough.
Soft, low-protein flours are best for cookies. For commercial production flours are specifically
blended for cookie dough. These blends are not available for the home cook, but a cookie that is
home baked with TLC and all-purpose flour beats a commercial cookie made with a special flour
blend anytime.
Sugar is an essential part for successful cookies. It increases tenderness, is responsible for
the crust color (as it caramelizes in the oven), extends freshness (by holding on to moisture), it robs
moisture from flour (so no gluten can form) and it gives that nice and desirable sweet taste. If you
prefer cookies less sweet, you can reduce the sugar by 10 to 15 percent without sacrificing quality.
If it still tastes too sweet, try experimenting with even less sugar, until the drop in quality outweighs
the drop in sweetness.
Because the moisture in the dough is low, starch in the flour cannot change fully into gelatin
during baking (it needs moisture).The agreeably chewy quality of cookies is the result of this partial
gelatinization of the starch.
Fats are also essential ingredients. Originally lard was the fat of choice in cookies, but
today's preferences are vegetable shortening, margarine and butter, less often oil. Butter is by far the
best for flavor, tenderness and a melt-in-the-mouth perception, vegetable shortening is the next best
if you must avoid butter. Margarine gives you the same results as vegetable shortening (they are
both hydrogenated vegetable oils in different forms). If you prefer to use less butter but still want
the flavor, try half butter and half vegetable shortening (or margarine). If you decide to reduce the
total fat in cookies and bars, you also reduce quality. Food scientists have been busy with some
success to come up with lower or no-fat cookies and bars but retaining gustatory satisfaction.
In "health" cookies there is drastically reduced fat while fruit juice takes the place of
sugar—they are more like sweetened unleavened bread than real cookies. Good for your health but
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