Learning a Thing or Two

For Valentine's Day I decided to make cookies for L to take into the office.* He got me a copy of Sweet! From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener by Mani Niall as a holiday gift and I decided it was time to give it a whirl. I decided to make black and white chocolate drops (chocolate cookies rolled in turbinado sugar, baked, and topped with a small dallop of white chocolate ganache- sort of like black-and-white black eyed susans). I whipped up the dough on Sat and test baked some tasty samples for use to try. The cookies were great - chocolatey but not over rich and the turbindo sugar gave them a crispy crust. So I left the dough in the fridge over night, and then popped it in the freezer the next morning. When I started baking on Sunday night I had a disaster on my hands. The cookies spread all over the cookie sheet and did this strange "boiling" thing.

Basically they turned out flat and with a texture like a melted tootsie roll. Ick. In many circumstance I've discovered that aging my dough produces a better flavored cookie with a tighter crumb and less spread. Since my Chocolate Chip cookie trial last spring, I've been aging all of my doughs. Then I re-read the recipe which said "chill dough for 60 min and up to 12 hours", and began to wonder - why did the aging go badly this time?

Thanks to google, I think I figured it out. Cocoa powder is acidic and baking soda is basic. In order for the proper reactions to take place, doughs with cocoa powder and baking soda must be baked rather quickly. Otherwise the chemical reaction will be neutralized and you'll get flat cookies.
Example A:

The cookie on the left was cooked w/in 1 hr of mixing the dough, the cookie on the R is the same dough aged 24 hour. 

Once I got the dough figured out I started making the white chocolate ganache. Here's another cooking tip: DO NOT buy white chocolate chips or chunks from Whole Foods. I don't normally shop at Whole Paycheck, but picked up the white chocolate when I picked up the Turbindo sugar (WF was closer than TJs). It melted into a strange, gritty, foul tasting, plasticy mess. Guittard or Ghiradeli make a far superior white chocolate, and if you can find Green and Black's, it's more expensive but worth every penny.

The take away is: if doing a recipe with cocoa powder, pay special attention to the amount of time between mixing all ingredients and baking. If you're cookies are turning out flat and strange, you may need to reduce the time the dough rests and I will no longer freeze cocoa powder based doughs for later use.

Final results

Close up

As a cookbook, Sweet! is well-written, give a good glimpse into the world of how sweeteners work in baking, and has interesting recipes. I wish the recipes were given in weight as well as volume measurements, but that's only a minor irritation. I look forward to making and posting more recipe reviews in the future.

 *My oh so sneaky way of making friends, by feeding people.