Cookie Results

I gathered a few intrepid cookie engineers/tasters and baked up my doughs. On the whole, the melted butter doughs turned out sort of blah and flat. The creamed butter and sugar doughs were the most flavorful and had the most "lift". We liked the recipes that had about 4 oz butter to 1.25-1.5 c flour (150-180g) to 1-1.25 sugar (220-270g) (top 3 recipes). Too much flour was bland, and a higher butter to flour wth lower sugar ration (as in the Alton Brown) lost structural integrity when cookies (molten dough with chocolate ship islands, instead of a melty marriage of the two).

In reverse order of goodness:

5. Alton Brown's "The Chewy" - this cookie has a weird flat spongy texture and almost no flavor that was particularly tasty. The milk thinned these out a bit and added a funny, muffiny taste. The reminded me of muffin tops tops. No one finished even 1/2 of one of these cookies, which one taster described as prison food before expunging them from the competition. Would not even consider making these again.

4. Giant Chocolate Chip Heath Bar Cookies - This dough was designed to hold in broken up pieces of Halloween candy and they would be perfect for that. They are a very dense, sturdy cookie that isn't particularly sweet - perfect for holding in chocolate peanut butter cups, butterfingers, snickers, you name it. They were ok, but not worth making again except for the aforementioned condition.

3. Carla Robbins Chocolate Chip Cookie - This was the second melted butter cookie and much better than Alton Brown's. This was one of the first attempts to "build a better Toll House" cookie, and was very popular (this cookie and the UNIX cookie were a very close 2nd and 3rd). I liked the flavor of the melted butter (carmely), but I think when compared to my current standard cookie recipe (Citizen Cake crossed with techniques from Cook's Illustrated), t is not as easy or flavorful.

2. UNIX Engineer Stand Mixer Cookie - This is a fabulous cookie - cripy edges with melty pools of soft dough and melted chocolate in the middle. This is a fussy cookie - specific times are given for beating the butter (4 min), adding the sugar and beating (another 5 min, but only scrape down twice), and they cooked at a high temp for a short period of time (400 for 6-8 min). They were very tasty melty, chewy, and had enough structure that they didn't collapse when you bit into them. I would definitely make these again and recommend them for anyone who has ever wondered "does all the beating and creaming make a difference?". Yes, it does.

1. NY Times Cookie - the hands down winner. This is a very flavorful cookie with a wonderfully dense structure. This is another fussy recipe and I think the increased amounts of white sugar, the cake flour, and baking powder gave it the texture that I adore. I, and I'm picky, have one "complaint" with this cookie and it has to do with the white sugar- it gives great texture but makes it taste a little like a white sugar/butter cookie with chocolate chips. While I really go for the richer brown sugar taste over the sweeter and crispier white sugar taste. I think in the future I wouldn't so much reduce the sugar, as increase the brown at the expense of the white, although keeping enough white sugar in it to maintain the texture through baking.

I will definitely make the NY Times and the UNIX cookies again. I may even add baking powder to the UNIX cookies to see if I can get a cross between the two. I liked the Giant Heath Bar cookies as cookies to pack a lot of stuff into, even if they were a bit bland on their own. However, both the NYT and UNIX cookies are pretty labour intensive, need to chill at least over night, and require a heavy duty stand mixer. If I have the forethought to plan ahead, I'll make one of those doughs. But on the whole, I'm not sure that they replace the tastiness of the Citizen Cake Cookie Dough a good friend passed along to me, made with some of the beating techniques of the CI cookie. I think the NYT was so good b/c it reminded all of us of a slightly denser version of the Citizen Cake Cookie.

This was a lot of fun, I may do it again with oatmeal cookies....

Merrily We Sew Along

Finished one baby project and onto the next. I finished my grading yesterday evening and decided to take today to dedicate to craftiness. I got the quilt top pieced this past weekend and picked up the orange and yellow stripy flannel for the back fo the quilt on Tuesday. If I hadn't run out of thread I could have finished stippling the top this afternoon. So, back to Hart's for me for more thread, but I made good progress, no? My stitch length isn't as even as I'd like it to be, and I'm a little awkward around some of the seams and corners, but not bad for not having quilted in 4 years. I think it looks pretty darn cute and will look even better finished.

workstation - TV show on laptop, coffee on the other side

partially quilted top and the back flannel folded over.

flannel close up

another look at the stippling and fabrics.

Cookie Results Coming Soon!

Mega cookie baking happened and the review will be up this week. Preview: Alton Brown failed us ("I would only feed those to prisoners! As punishment!"), and NY Times was a strong show.

Now, a question: If you were a student who had to write a final and one of the prompts asked you to considering whether a certain culture was "medieval" "modern" or both - wouldn't you first do an internal check to make sure you understood those terms? And if you didn't, maybe choose a different topic? Not my students! Don't understand modern (i.e. think it means the computer age), no problem! Don't understand basics of what medieval Europe looked like (i.e. "Culture X in the 1600s had many medieval hold-overs like a free market economy, but that didn't prevent them from also being modern." in case you don't know, there was no free market in 17th century Europe and a highly regulated economy would be one of the elements that most historians would point to as a "medieval hold-over". We spent weeks on this).

And, if there are any students who have found this blog, you're probably smart enough not to do the following (but in case you aren't...): Never, ever, start a paper with "Merriam Webster.com defines XXXX as XXXX"

Baby Season

I currently have two very pregnant friends. Although I somehow missed the "everyone we know gets married" phase, now that I'm 30 I'm seeing the "everyone have a baby" phase begin. Both women have made the whole pregnancy think look down right easy - they've been glamourous and easy going the whole time.

Remarkably unsurprising to anyone who reads this blog, I have two baby-related crafts in the works. For the first baby, BabyXX, we have a pirate's blanket. The pattern is OpArt from Knitty and it's knit in Cascade 220 superwash. Because Mum is highly allergic to cats, it's been washed, dried in a cat-free environment and is currently blocking suspended between a curtain rod and a door.

The second project is the Simple Modern Baby Quilt by Elizabeth Fransson. I feel in love with the pattern and found well-suited fabrics this past weekend. I cut all the pieces for the top and have pinned the top part of the blocks. This is the 3rd quilt I've made and is going much faster than the first two. The colors are greens, oranges, and blues - I'm thinking of a dark blue binding and a yellow/orange flannel for the back. Not sure on the thread, but it'll likely be stippled. It's been a while since I've done any sewing and it's nice to get back to it.

The 5 main blocks, all pinned up and ready to be sewn.

Oona loves crafting.

She's the most helpful kitty in the whole wide world.

501Beers

One Acoustical Engineering nearly-done PhD, one blog, one goal: to try and comment on 501 beers. A good friend of mine from many years back (met when he was dating my little sis) has started a new blog: 501beers . It's a pretty simple premise, and with his SO in China he's zipping through the first 50 or so pretty quick (filing diss + SO far away = lots of beer). It's a good way to read and find out about beer you might not think of buying for yourself (ever really want to try gluten-free beer?) , all with humour and w/ some beer appreciation that is low on the snobbiness

In relation to the beer drinking, I propose that anyone reading this and also attending the WHA in San Diego this summer come join me for an expedition to two favorite breweries: Stone Brewery and Rockbottom in La Jolla. I've never been to Stone but love their beers, and Rockbottom was a local favorite of L and mine when we lived in SD. It's a chain, so the food is standard chain-brewery food, but their beers are made by different brewmasters in each restaurant, and the happy hour is really good and runs from 4-7 and 10-12. It's also where we hit up before L proposed to me, so I have some fond memories of this place.

Dough!

I have 1/3 batches of 5 different Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes chilling in either the fridge or freezer. It was fun to make a bunch of doughs back to back and I really appreciated some of the minute differences in the recipes that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Like creaming butter and sugar - the butter needs to be chilled, chopped into chunks, and it has to happen for at least 4 min. I've definitely been undercreaming my butter. I also had confirmed what i had always suspected - that I much prefer cookies with all brown sugar to those that incorporate white sugar. Makes me miss my super dark brown sugar from London. My next task to figuring out how to bake up all of these little darlings as they need different oven temps and different cooking times, but I still want to eat them warm :) I think I'm going to aim to bake them sometime after a full day of hiking, rock climbing, and maybe a 12K run - this is a lot of cookies. Here are my notes so far:

1. Ultimate Stand Mixer Cookie - supposedly written by a Unix programmer, and absolutely fabulous. The egg adding and chilling technique made these take a little longer, but it was worth it. L and I couldn't resist all the cookies in the house this weekend and baked two of these up. They looked just like the photo and were incredible.

2. Carla Rollins' Chocolate Chip - a melted, but not browned butter cookie. Very soft dough, I'm concerned they might expand and get thing in the oven.

3. Alton Brown "The Chewy" - These are fairly close to the original toll house recipe, but eliminate an egg white, use more brown sugar, melt the butter, and add milk. I didn't think you'd be able to taste it, but the milky flavor added depth and a nice softness to the dough. I'm looking forward to baking these.

4. Giant Chocolate Chip Heath Bar Cookies - a drier dough, perfect for lots of mix-ins.

5. NY Times Chocolate Chip Cookie - I've always wanted to try this but never had the excuse. This dough uses more white sugar to brown sugar and hence tasted a bit like sugar cookie dough. The cake flour added a lighter texture, as did the baking powder, and I used regular flour instead of bread flour.

All the cookies have guittard chocolate chips, no nuts, and no add-ins such as orange zest (except the Heath Bar cookies which have, you know, Heath Bars).

C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me

Come on! You know the words!

A few days ago one of my favorite baking blogs, www.cookiemadness.net, posted her top 5 chocolate chip cookie recipes. As you probably know, I'm always looking to improve my chocolate cookies - a tasty, and never ending quest. So far I really like the CI Chocolate chip cookie with the browned butter and mixing technique crossed with a Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe from Citizen Cake that was given to me by a good friend. The CI is good, but uses more butter than I generally like, and the Citizen Cake recipe is awesome, but uses a little more sugar than I generally like. Not that I'm trying to necessarily make my cookies health food, but I do try to keep the sugar/butter ratios from getting unnecessarily elevated.

So when this post came along I decided, "now here's a challenge." Or maybe, "here's a way to procrastinate and eat lots of cookies." Either win, it's a win-win. I like my cookies thick, dense and on the doughy side of things -no thin and crispy for me, thank you - and all but the CI recipe are new to me.

Like wine tasting, I do my best baking tasting when I can taste side by side instead of over a period of a few weeks or months. My goal is to make all of the doughs (except #3, for which I will replace with the NY times re-worked chocolate chip cookie recipe), age them to the specified time in the fridge and then pop them in the freezer. I'm not going to do it all at once, but over a period of weeks and plan to take notes on each recipe. When they are all finished, I'm going to bake up 2 cookies from each recipe and test them. I will try to take non-crappy pics and post the results.