#97 The Scale, The Clothes, The Stress Baking...
My old scale knew the score.
We had a deal.
He generously told me I was five pounds lighter than I actually was.
And I generously gave him a home.
But this new guy.
With his fancy digital display and pinpoint accuracy – he doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.
You want to keep me happy?
You need to lie to me a little.
Not a lot.
Just a little.
Copyright© 2024 Anne Morse Hambrock All rights reserved.
The Clothes
Yes.
This is true.
I do keep various sizes of my favorite clothes on hand.
To, you know, accommodate the ups and downs.
The weeks where I’m real good and eat salads.
And the weeks where I bake with wild abandon.
Bake with wild abandon and eat with gusto.
Despite the previous poem about the scale, it’s only a little bit about the number on the display.
That number is really just the indicator telling me which dress I’m grabbing.
The Stress Baking - Snickerdoodles!
Well, the ol’ stress is risin’ rather than fallin’ and my answer this week was to bake Snickerdoodles.
Snickerdoodles are one of those cookies that can taste great or lousy. It seems to be all about the right recipe so I've done some experimenting and have arrived at what I think is a pretty tasty cookie.
First I tested the good old Betty Crocker recipe from the original 1950's Big Red cookbook. (I've done a lot of recipe testing on this book and written on it extensively, including some of my favorite recipes which you can see on my Overbooked And Underpaid blog in the category Back To Betty.)
The Betty Crocker recipe uses all shortening and produces a nice cookie but it's a little bland and there isn't enough cinnamon sugar on top, nor enough of a "crinkle".
Next up was a recipe from the book "Zoe Bakes Cookies" by Zoe Francois. (Zoe talks extensively in her book about the influence of the Big Red Betty Crocker cookbook on her own baking.) This was an excellent cookie but used an awful lot of butter (two whole sticks) and there were some issues with salt. The best feature of this recipe was the crinkly tops with extra cinnamon sugar.
My biggest contribution comes in the fat and salt content. Butter prices being what they are, I just can't bring myself to use two whole sticks so I went with half butter half shortening. Zoe uses unsalted butter and 1/2 tsp kosher salt and I swore the cookies were a lot saltier, and not in a way I liked. I imagine I was getting more salt punch because kosher salt is much bigger and doesn't break down in the cookie. It just didn't work for me. (Interestingly, my recipe uses an entire tsp of table salt and salted butter and still tastes less salty.)
Anyway - here we go:
Ingredients:
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp regular table salt
1 stick salted butter (softened)
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/4 cups white sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
Topping
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar - (I have not given ratios of cinnamon to sugar because people have different tastes - use your judgement when adding cinnamon to 1/2 cup sugar)
cream - (it doesn't seem to matter much if it is heavy or light cream.)
Note 1: Before you start mixing ingredients - line your baking pans with either parchment paper or silicone baking mats. I use the silicone mats for best results.
Note 2: This dough works best when chilled - you will need a plate or something else that you can put the balls of dough onto for chilling,
Note 3: What kind of mixer you use matters - check the asterisks for more details.
In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. (I like to put half the flour into the bowl, then the other dry ingredients, then the rest of the flour on top before whisking. It seems to distribute the baking soda better.) Set the dry ingredients aside.
In the large bowl of a stand mixer*, put the shortening and butter and mix them on medium high speed until well mixed. Add the white sugar and beat until mixed, then the brown sugar. Beat until a grainy paste forms and you are starting to see a little air go into the mixture.
Add the first egg and beat on high* for one minute. Then add the second egg and beat until nice and fluffy. Add the vanilla and beat until even fluffier.
Turn off the mixer. Before we add the flour we need to talk about mixers.
*Earlier you may have noticed an asterisk after "stand mixer" and "high". I have both a big Kitchenaid and an old vintage Sunbeam and have written a whole post about the differences between the two mixers. For cookies, I swear by the old stand mixers - they seem to put more air into the dough and the cookies are lighter. The mixing speeds I have given so far are for a vintage mixer. (If you are using an old mixer they usually have a listing on the dial that tells you exactly what speed to use for each step.) If you are using a modern Kitchenaid, your speeds are going to be a little lower because they don't have as many settings. For a Kitchenaid mixer use the paddle attachment and medium to medium high speed for most steps.
Adding the dry ingredients.
If you are using a vintage mixer you can add dry ingredients gradually while the mixer is running on a low speed. If using a modern mixer, add the dry ingredients with the mixer OFF. Then mix on low speed until just combined.
Set the dough aside.
Put some cinnamon sugar into a bowl, and about two tablespoons of cream into another bowl, and lay out a piece of parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. (Again, dairy prices being what they are, you can start with a little cream and add more if you need to as you go. This way you won’t waste a lot of extra cream.) You will be rolling your cookies in the sugar and temporarily putting them on the mat or parchment afterwards.
Zoe uses a cookie scoop for this next bit but I find cookie scoops to be annoying. They seem to clog a lot and a bunch of the batter sticks inside and doesn't always drop out well onto the cookie sheet. So I use the old tried and true double teaspoon method. (If you don't know what this is, it is just two regular dinner spoons - you scoop some batter in one spoon and push it onto the baking mat with the other spoon. I find this much easier to manage. And I also don't care too much about all my cookies being an identical size. It's not too hard to get them close to the same size though with careful scooping.)
Whatever method you use, first scoop the dough into the amount that will get you a ball of a little over an inch in diameter when rolled in your palms. Roll each scoop of dough into a ball - I do about six scoops at a time - then put into cinnamon sugar and shake or roll around in sugar until coated. Set these balls aside on the first bit of parchment I mentioned earlier.
Once all the dough has been formed and sugared, take each ball, dip it halfway into the cream and then into more cinnamon sugar. Set the dipped cookie on a plate or silpat or whatever else you prefer to use to chill the dough balls in a fridge or freezer.
Chill the sugared dough balls - if using freezer 15-20 minutes and refrigerator at least 30 minutes.
About 5 minutes before dough is done chilling, heat your oven to 400° F.
Place 12 chilled balls - cream and sugar side up - on each prepared cookie sheet and make sure they are not too close together because they do spread.
Zoe recommends that you bake one pan at a time using only the middle rack. To be fair this does produce wonderful evenly baked cookies. But I'm impatient and used all three racks and the cookies came out fine. However, be advised that you need to turn all the pans around halfway through baking and should also swap the top and bottom pans at the same time if you do this.
Bake until golden but not too over done - this is usually about 8 minutes but the oven is very hot, and ovens vary, so they will bake quickly and you want to keep an eye on them! They will puff up a lot while in the oven and then deflate after you take them out. This is normal and part of the process of creating that signature "crinkle".
Cool on rack and eat!
(Using the “two spoon” method will give you about 63 cookies with diameters of 2 1/2 to 3 inches.)
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