Print this Article

Ok, this recipe needed a “do over.”  A huge part of the online bak­ing com­mu­nity is about shar­ing, that’s a large part of why we do this: a shared love of food and cook­ing it.  We all see recipes and foods online or in cook­books that we like and it’s per­fectly fine to go ahead and make them and then to write about your expe­ri­ences.  But, and here’s the point… I saw this recipe for yummy cook­ies on Caroline’s Choco­late & Car­rots blog and thought I’d see how they turned out since I have more than one friend these days who has a reac­tion to flour prod­ucts but still likes a sweet, baked treat.

In my haste yes­ter­day to:

1. Gather up two dogs to take them to the vet for shots
2. Wash my car and vac­uum the inside in 105 degrees
3. Go to the post office, video store, bank, City build­ing, library
4. Get Star­bucks
5. See what Hobby Lobby had on sale
6. Buy lunch
7. Gro­cery shop for our healthy eat­ing lifestyle change
8. Go to the gym
9. Do some work for a client or two (need money from time to time…LOL)
10. Remove the cov­ers from both air con­di­tioner con­densers to clean them and help Hubby(and about destroy both in the process),

I hit the “pub­lish” but­ton on my Word­Press post instead of “save draft” which inad­ver­tently posted a half baked arti­cle which didn’t give any credit to Car­o­line and her recipe at all.  Luck­ily for me, she was very under­stand­ing and polite about it… Sorry Caroline..

Any­way, here is the recipe and they are really great cook­ies so you must bake them!

One of the first things I do before I bake is set all my ingre­di­ents out and all of the equip­ment I’m going to be using… This is called mise en place or putting every­thing in it’s place. You can read more about that term here…

Ingre­di­ents: 3 Cups pow­dered sugar ⅔ Cups of dark or Dutch Processed cocoa powder ⅛ Tea­spoon salt (we use Kosher) 3 to 4 large egg whites (room temperature) 1 Table­spoon of GOOD vanilla (I use Madagascar) ½ cup choco­late chips (I used good ‘ol Nes­tle Semi-Sweet)

Method

• First off, pre­heat your oven to 350°F (180°C) (F to C temp con­verter here)
• Pre­pare your bak­ing sheets with sil­i­con mats or sprayed parchment
• Com­bine all dry ingre­di­ents into a bowl (flour, cocoa pow­der and salt)
• Fold in 3 egg whites and then vanilla
• Only beat until mix­ture is moist and fudge brownie like.  If it’s too dry then add an addi­tional egg white.
• Fold in choco­late chips
• Using a table­spoon, place cookie mix onto pre­pared bak­ing sheets, leav­ing room as they will spread. (I got 12 on a half pan sized bak­ing sheet)

Bake for approx 14 mins or until the tops begin to crack. They will have a shiny gloss fin­ish to them.

Haha… my first embed­ded video..

 

Points to consider:

If you are using a con­vec­tion oven adjust the tem­per­a­ture down by about 25 degrees and you can usu­ally reduce your bake time by a minute or two.  Keep an eye on your cook­ies as all ovens vary a little.

Many vari­ables can affect your bak­ing… humid­ity, alti­tude and the age of your prod­ucts.  For exam­ple, the older the flour  is the drier it can be, there­fore often requir­ing the addi­tion of more liq­uid than nor­mally called for just to get it to the right con­sis­tency… don’t panic, there is NO FLOUR in this par­tic­u­lar recipe, this was just an exam­ple of a variable.

Enjoy and happy baking!

Print this Article

In response to a ques­tion today I thought it might be inter­est­ing to visit why some recipes use mass (weight) instead of by vol­ume (cups) or by count.  Bak­ing is a sci­ence peo­ple. Unlike a lot of savoury recipes, adding a dash of bak­ing soda or a smidgen of yeast prob­a­bly won’t get you the best pos­si­ble baked prod­uct.  Baked goods rely on chem­istry and the cor­rect ratios of leav­en­ing agents to do the job.  You don’t guess at the tem­per­a­ture of the oven and con­sider near enough to be good enough.  No, we fol­low the guide and hope like hell we have it right.  We have ALL read our ingre­di­ent lists incor­rectly.  Heck, it seems the older I get the more often I am likely to for­get an ingre­di­ent altogether!!

For most of his­tory, most cook­books did not spec­ify quan­ti­ties pre­cisely, instead talk­ing of “a nice leg of spring lamb”, a “cup­ful” of lentils, a piece of but­ter “the size of a wal­nut”, and “suf­fi­cient” salt. In Europe, cook­books used mass (“weight”) rather than vol­ume, though infor­mal mea­sure­ments such as a “pinch”, a “drop”, or a “hint” (soupçon) con­tinue to be used from time to time. In the U.S.A., Fan­nie Farmer intro­duced the more exact spec­i­fi­ca­tion of quan­ti­ties by vol­ume in her 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.

Today, most of the world prefers mea­sure­ment by weight, though the pref­er­ence for vol­ume mea­sure­ments con­tin­ues in North America.

In domes­tic cook­ing, bulk solids, notably flour and sugar, are mea­sured by vol­ume, often cups, though they are sold by weight at retail. Weight mea­sures are used for meat. But­ter may be mea­sured by either weight (¹⁄₄ lb) or vol­ume (3 tbsp) or a com­bi­na­tion of weight and vol­ume (¹⁄₄ lb plus 3 tbsp); it is sold by weight but in pack­ages marked to facil­i­tate com­mon divi­sions by eye. (As a sub-packaged unit, a stick of but­ter, at ¹⁄₄ lb [113 g], is a de facto mea­sure in the U.S.)

Cook­books in Canada use the same sys­tem, although pints and gal­lons would be taken as their Impe­r­ial quan­ti­ties unless spec­i­fied oth­er­wise. Fol­low­ing the adop­tion of the met­ric sys­tem, recipes in Canada are fre­quently pub­lished with met­ric conversions.

Dif­fer­ent ingre­di­ents are mea­sured in dif­fer­ent ways:

Liq­uid ingre­di­ents are gen­er­ally mea­sured by vol­ume worldwide.

Dry bulk ingre­di­ents, such as sugar and flour, are mea­sured by weight in most of the world (“250 g flour”), and by vol­ume in North Amer­ica (“1/2 cup flour”). Small quan­ti­ties of salt and spices are gen­er­ally mea­sured by vol­ume world­wide, as few house­holds have suf­fi­ciently pre­cise bal­ances to mea­sure by weight.

Meats are gen­er­ally mea­sured by weight or count world­wide: “a 2 kg chicken”; “four lamb chops”.

Veg­eta­bles may be mea­sured by weight or by count, despite the inher­ent impre­ci­sion of counts given the vari­abil­ity in the size of vegetables.

Chopped or cut-up meats and veg­eta­bles are gen­er­ally mea­sured by weight, except in North Amer­ica where they are mea­sured by volume.

Met­ric measures

In most of the world, recipes use the met­ric sys­tem of litres (l, some­times L) and mil­li­l­itres (ml, some­times mL), grams (g) and kilo­grams (kg), and degrees Cel­sius (°C). The word litre is always spelled liter in the USA.

The English-speaking world fre­quently mea­sures weight in pounds (avoir­du­pois), with vol­ume mea­sures based on cook­ing uten­sils and pre-metric mea­sures. The actual val­ues fre­quently devi­ate from the uten­sils on which they were based, and there is lit­tle con­sis­tency from one coun­try to another.

Most blog recipes tend toward the home-based cook and most of our recipes use vol­u­met­ric mea­sures.  How­ever, from time to time you are going to come across a recipe that is based on mass or weight.  Most of the West­ern world uses mass mea­sure­ments and with our world becom­ing such a small place through the use of tech­nol­ogy it helps to know how to deal with alter­na­tive mea­sure­ments and why it’s a good idea.

Mass or weight mea­sure­ments tend to be far more accu­rate than a cup o’ this or that.  This is largely due to the fact that a lot of the bak­ing cup sets are just not accu­rate, hav­ing been designed to look pretty rather than to be com­pletely precise.

Ref­er­ences:

Grif­fin, Mary Annarose; Gisslen, Wayne (2005). Pro­fes­sional bak­ing (Fourth ed.). New York: John Wiley. p. 6. ISBN0-471–46427-9. Retrieved 2010 Dec 15. “Vol­ume mea­sure is often used when scal­ing water for small or medium-sized batches of bread. Results are gen­er­ally good. How­ever, when­ever accu­racy is crit­i­cal, it is bet­ter to weigh.”

Print this Article

Since Sep­tem­ber I have for the most part, been in Aus­tralia, my coun­try of birth, vis­it­ing my Father who has been under­go­ing radi­a­tion treat­ment for an inop­er­a­ble can­cer. I’m back home now and we are wait­ing to see if the treat­ment for my Dad has suc­cess­fully erad­i­cated the tumours or not.

On a hap­pier note, Thanks­giv­ing was busy and most of my chil­dren made it home. Now for another of my favourite times of the year Christ­mas and all the fun bak­ing to be done for the fes­tiv­i­ties to come!

Thank you for all the emails ask­ing where I was and just the friend­ship in gen­eral! You are all amazing!

More soon, Colleen

Print this Article

Some peo­ple col­lect stamps, oth­ers like me, col­lect recipe books.  But what’s the good of own­ing all these glo­ri­ous tomes if I don’t actu­ally pull them off the shelf and try out some of the recipes.  I’ve made lemon bars before but this time I’m going to be using Ina Garten’s recipe.  Noth­ing says sum­mer more than lemon flavoured desserts.

Ina Garten’s Lemon Bars
Ingre­di­ents Crust: 1/2 pound unsalted but­ter, at room tem­per­a­ture 1/2 cup gran­u­lated sugar 2 cups flour 1/8 tea­spoon kosher salt Fill­ing: 6 extra-large eggs at room tem­per­a­ture 3 cups gran­u­lated sugar 2 table­spoons grated lemon zest (4 to 6 lemons) 1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 cup flour Con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar, for dusting	Ina Garten’s Lemon Bars
Method Pre­heat the oven to 350 degrees F. To make the crust, cream the but­ter and sugar until light in the bowl of an elec­tric mixer fit­ted with the pad­dle attach­ment. Com­bine the flour and salt.  With the mixer on low, add to the but­ter until just mixed.   Dump the dough onto a well-floured board and gather into a ball. Flat­ten the dough with floured hands and press it into a 9 by 13 by 2-inch bak­ing sheet, build­ing up a 1/2-inch edge on all sides. Chill. Bake the crust for 15 to 20 min­utes, until very lightly browned. Let cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on. For the fill­ing.  Whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and flour. Pour over the crust and bake for 30 to 35 min­utes, until the fill­ing is set. Let cool to room temperature. Cut into desired sized bars or tri­an­gles and dust with con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar.

---

Ok, so I like this recipe. My daugh­ter thought they got a bit “rub­bery” after being refrig­er­ated overnight but when you are try­ing them at a 2am fridge raid, who knows what they taste like? I found that if I microwaved a lemon bar for around 20 sec­onds, they were returned to their “warm out of the oven” state and were still very tasty and enjoyable.

Print this Article

My hus­band eats most every­thing I make for him. How­ever, he does have an absolute all time favourite — Choco­late Chip Cookies.

This recipe is the one from the book “Bak­ing” by Dorie Greenspan.  It’s a fab­u­lous recipe and one that I make often.  Nonethe­less, we’ve all tried recipes out of books or from the inter­net that just haven’t worked out right?  Right!

Part of my adven­tures in bak­ing lead me to try other cooks recipes.  Why not?  They have already put a lot of hard work into per­fect­ing their recipes and part of my chal­lenge is to see if I can repro­duce the item in my own kitchen under my own cir­cum­stances.  Is it more humid where I live?  Have I mea­sured my ingre­di­ents cor­rectly?  How does my oven com­pare?  So many dif­fer­ences have to be fac­tored in even when using a tried and true recipe.

This recipe turned out great even in a humid kitchen in Okla­homa, with an orig­i­nal 1960s oven.  They are dis­ap­pear­ing quickly as I write this so they musn’t be too bad or the locals are just plain starving!

45 cook­ies Change to: cookies US Metric 1 2 3 4 5 clear stars Write a Review! (optional) Submit Cancel Ingre­di­ents 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tea­spoon salt 3/4 tea­spoon bak­ing soda 1 cup unsalted but­ter, at room temperature 1 cup sugar 2/3 cup packed light brown sugar 2 tea­spoons pure vanilla extract 2 large eggs 12 ounces bit­ter­sweet choco­late, chopped into chips or 2 cups store-bought choco­late chips or semi­sweet choco­late chunks 1 cup finely chopped wal­nuts (optional) or pecans (optional)

Choco­late Chip Cookies

Direc­tions Cen­ter a rack in the oven and pre­heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two bak­ing sheets with parch­ment or sil­i­cone mats. Whisk together the flour, salt, and bak­ing soda. Work­ing with a stand mixer, prefer­ably fit­ted with the pad­dle attach­ment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the but­ter at medium speed for about 1 minute, until smooth. Add the sug­ars and beat for another 2 min­utes or so, until well-blended. Beat in the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beat­ing for 1 minute after each egg goes inches Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingre­di­ents in 3 por­tions, mix­ing only until each addi­tion is incor­po­rated. On low speed, or by hand with a rub­ber spat­ula, mix in the choco­late and nuts. Spoon the dough by slightly rounded table­spoon­fuls onto the bak­ing sheets, leav­ing about 2 inches between spoonfuls. Bake the cook­ies– one sheet at a time and rotat­ing the sheet at the mid­way point– for 10–12 min­utes, or until they are brown at the edges and golden in the cen­ter; they may still be a lit­tle soft in the mid­dle, and that’s just fine. Pull the sheet from the oven and allow the cook­ies to rest for 1 minute, then care­fully, using a wide metal spat­ula, trans­fer them to racks to cool to room temperature. Repeat with the remain­der of the dough, cool­ing the bak­ing sheets between batches.

Print this Article

On Sat­ur­day Feb 21st, we went to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Library Sys­tems Book Sale! It was my first time which became more evi­dent as we approached the Okla­homa State Fair Ground. There were far more cars try­ing to park than I ever antic­i­pated. Sea­soned book fair vet­er­ans toted bags, suit­cases and plas­tic garbage cans with wheels and I saw one lady with her lit­tle red wagon!! These peo­ple were serious. Upon enter­ing the pavil­ion where the books were, there were taped off rows where the early birds had been made wait until the doors opened, so you just know all the good books were already gone. Even so, I man­aged to snag­gle 22, yes TWENTY TWO great books filled with culi­nary bak­ing delights from days gone by to more recently pub­lished Pas­try, Pills­bury and Betty Crocker bak­ing books. How much did this booty cost me… $26.00 for the entire load! I guess the rea­son to share this news with you apart from my obvi­ous over-excitement is that I hope to pre­pare many treats from these trea­sures in the com­ing months and con­tinue to add to my trove of tried and true recipes.  If you don’t have a book fair any­where near you soon, I sug­gest get­ting along to the local library to bor­row and browse before you buy!  Have a great week!