jedovaty
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Posts posted by jedovaty
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I just uploaded a better picture, hopefully that comes through, where I included a head-on view to show heights of the cookies.
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Hi! What began as a "why do cookies sometimes get oily" question has turned into a "let's play with gluten free cookie dough" topic 😁.
@Emily440 Thanks so much for that! The original AB recipe uses all brown rice flour. I don't recall why I changed the recipe to be 50/50 brown/white years ago when I was making the vegan variation, but, I did recall doing so which is why it made its way here.
I made a variety of doughs since this thread prompted by discussions, then baked them up to compare. The recipes are provided in the attached table - color coding denotes mixing groups. All with same scoop.
The original batch was a full one, the rest were half-batches, there's only so much room in the freezer! Batches 2-6 used a hand mixer instead of the stand mixer. Baked at 350 + fan (e.g. 375) for 11 minutes. Through discussions with the intended recipient of these cookies, I learned xanthan gum causes irritation, so I excluded it in 2-6.
Here are comments, left to right of the picture:
1. Original dough that prompted this thread. Cookies were oily and randomly spread. I think it has to do with using the stand mixer and over mixing or just not properly mixing bottom of the bowl. Tasty.
2. Tried @teonzo's mayo technique. They spread, and were shiny, but neither oily nor greasy. Super crispy, lacy and Mandelbrot-patterned texture, I really like these. The coconut oil flavor was masked compared to the original. I'm not sure if the spread was because I omitted the white sugar (accident), extra yolk brought more moisture, improperly mixed, or simply nature of the ingredients and technique. I suspect it was the latter because the spreading was consistent and had body to it. The dough was soft and malleable even after several days in the freezer!
3. With arrival of chocolate supplies, I was anxious to try cacao butter instead of coconut oil. I followed technique suggestions here, pouring oil in slowly and mixing with sugar no more than a minute or two. As sugar and oil became uniform, I drizzled in the soy milk, and finished with rest of the wet ingredients. Results were neither oily nor greasy. Everything came together very nicely. I was sorely disappointed with flavor, though, the cacao butter is not good baked, at least, with the combination of ingredients. Unpleasant, almost like eating cookies off hot silpat sheets (you know that plastic, silicone flavor?).
4. Original recipe with the improved technique (slowly pouring oil in, short mixing times, etc). I also used the whole egg. Delicious, if not cloying. After tasting all the cookies and dough batter, the sugar was making me jitter. I think using the whole egg kept the cookies poofier and they spread less.
5. I read @Emily440's suggestion just as I prepared to shut down my computer Thursday evening, and was excited since I had all the ingredients on hand. The cookie recipient has issues with oats as well, so I subbed buckwheat flour***, which gels up kind of like oats, and thought I'd be close enough to her recommendation, except, I thought the amount of potato starch was a bit high so I dropped it a few grams. As I was mixing in the chocolate chips in the last step, I looked over at the packages and realized a mistake I used potato flour, not starch. Oh, well, might as well try. These were delicious. The reduced sugar is better. They did not spread as much, were more cakey and pleasantly moist inside.
6. The cookie recipient loves all things coconut, so decided to try this sub as the last step, and realized I have japanese potato starch (katakuriko), not american potato starch from some attempts to make karaage. It's not clear on the packaging whether the starch was derived from potatos or the water lilly. Coconut flour absorbs a lot of water, but I'm not sure how much more so I made sure to increase liquid items a bit. The resulting taste was interesting, but kind of bland. They have an unusual, almost unpleasant texture of very sproingy meatballs. They also did not spread at all.
Conclusion: for the official batch, I will reduce the sugar, sub in buckwheat for white rice flour, and stick with the 1 egg + yolk, rather than 2 eggs. I might try one more batch replacing the starches and/or potato flour with katakuriko. I could also try splitting the flours three ways with coconut, rice, and buckwheat, or add an extra yolk to the sixth test.. oh boy, too many choices 🤯
Thanks all for the help, hope you've enjoyed my attempts at making some tasty cookies. I enjoyed eating them!
*** I have hulled buckwheat groats on hand, which I rinse, spread out on a paper towel into one layer, and allow to dry overnight. I then grind down to flour (I use an EK43 coffee grinder... don't judge me). These have more moisture due to the rinsing stage, they absorb some water as they dry off, about 5% I think. I do this as a result of the advice here.
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I'll keep these things in mind. After 3 weeks, we're still chuckling about how gross the experiment was, but I hope to try some of the techniques here another day, since mom's garden has a huge area of mint growing. Especially now that I learned I can use other fats instead of the earthbalance sticks (which I think contributed to the pain), it'll open up some alternatives to us.
The best takeaway from this: although the results were without a doubt disappointing, we got a really good laugh out of them and learned something. Let's keep having fun 😎
OMG I hope to never smell mint simmering away in coconut milk again 🤢
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I attempted @teonzo's mayo technique, and did not change other factors in the recipe. The good news is that the cookies were not greasy to the touch at all, the bad news they did spread more than I wanted them to. I am not sure if that happened because I forgot the xanthan gum, or something else. The cookies did have a gloss to them.
Few interesting notes:
- after ~12 hours in the fridge and ~8 hours in the freezer, the pre-shaped cookie doughs are still soft and malleable. I've not experienced this, any cooke dough/batter always turns rock hard in the freezer, even butter based ones.
- with the small amount of oil, to successfully create the emulsion required I use two egg yolks and exclude all other liquid components. I added liquids to the dry goods and rubbed my hands until the dry mixture was crumbly. Then the last step, mixed in the mayo, followed by the chocolate chips.
- the coconut flavor from the unrefined oil I use is masked more with this technique; I baked a few from the last batch alongside these and was surprised by this
The above results further support that I over mixed the initial batch, and are likely a reason why some of my cookies in the past have these kinds of results. I'll try the original technique again, and this time just use a hand mixer and work until the components are integrated, rather than trying to replicate a butter creaming method.
I normally bake with parchment, but I'm out and costco hasn't had any in stock for a while. I'm also nearly out of aluminum foil, so I've been reusing the same sheet, looks used haha. 😛
By the way: the first attempted mayo emulsion I made broke (I handled it like my traditional method, just tossed egg, liquids, oil into jar and used the BAMix). It's nicely separated into oil and liquids, can I reuse it in a recipe now if I'm going to try the "regular" sugar/oil creaming method, or do I need to toss it and start from scratch?
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@teonzo excellent, thank you for that.
@Emily440 It's 180g oil to 360g starches (rice flour and corn and tapioca). So, 50% oil:starch. Is that too high? If so, what would you consider a good ratio for cookies like this? On your comment about beating the xantham gum, that's fascinating. I've watched it gel up water just by leaving it alone for a while. If you are in the US, you should be able to see the Good Eats video linked to above. AB doesn't mix much at all. That's where I think my mistake was. I chilled the dough a little, then portioned it, and finally let it rest in the fridge ~24 hours, and transferred to freezer. I bake directly from freezer.
I do have another batch going right now, was very curious to try teo's mayo technique. I am waiting for the dough to chill. I'll bring in feedback soon as I bake some up later tonight, it was... interesting
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Hello again. @kayb: sorry, I missed your post earlier. I'm using 80% less coconut oil by weight than butter. I don't think this is an issue of too much coconut oil. Do consider there are plenty of recipes using melted butter, so whether coconut oil is melted or not is less of a concern - here, it's likely technique, and going through all this I'm certain I simply overmixed . FWIW, with these cookies, the coconut oil was soft, but not fully solid or melted. There was a different recipe I tried with a more solid coconut oil and chilled bowl during creaming, it didn't work as there were chunks of coconut oil in the resulting dough. I think this is because coconut oil is not like butter in that it doesn't have a plastic-like phase.
@teonzo: on a total tangent, it's past 2am now, I woke up thinking about your comments of the mayo and sugar, and had to post: I don't think that air is introduced into mayo.. a mayo is as you say an emulsion, where we force a suspension of oil in water or water in oil situation. Maybe a little might be since there's fast mechanical action, however, it's not like creaming butter with sugar, or making whipped cream or egg white meringue, where air is part of the mixture; there's also a substantion increase in these, whereas I don't think I've ever noticed a volume change making aioli. That said, I do agree with you that over mixing the mayo and sugar would lead to breakdown of the emulsion - this makes sense, especially considering sugar is hygroscopic and would probably suck the water component out of the mayo separating the oil.
BTW, I did try some basic google research, and wasn't able to confirm or deny whether mayo is aerated. What I wrote is just conjecture at this point, so I am curious to hear whether I'm on the right track.
This is fun, thanks for the discussion
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For some reason I'm having a lot of trouble with the reply/quoting system.
1. The "alt butter liquid" row in the table is the the remaining 20% of the missing butter portion, generally any liquid/protein, to make up the weight. That's how I've done it in the past, and it'd worked well. In this case, I didn't add the full amount of water, but rather about half the amount.
2. We are in agreement then the purpose of xantham gum in this recipe, it is essentially a gluten replacement.
3. Apologies for the confusion. I was not making this recipe eggs free. I have done it before, using ground chia seeds and water, but in this case, I'm using the egg.
4. Thank you for the clarification on the mayo and sugar!
I'll give the mayo version a try next!
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@teonzo: I used 180 grams of coconut oil (it's the third column of the pdf attachment, where I used the "alt butter" and "alt butter liquid", and also noted in the original post that I used about 80% of the actual butter content).
That is fascinating process you describe to make cookies using a mayo. I don't think the xantham gum is there as an emulsifier, rather more a texture component to the rice flours and get the "chew". The emulsification would occur with the egg, since the recipe does have both a whole egg and an extra yolk. I might try this mayo process, that's more than enough egg for the water and oil (I use about 300ml oil per egg when I make aioli, I have no idea what that weighs though, but eyeballing 180g of coconut oil seemed less than 300ml?).
You also mentioned mixing the sugars in... you wouldn't do any additional "creaming", to beat in some air with the mayo and sugar? Just a mix until it is uniform?
As a fall back, I picked up some vegan butter to test (not the "earth balance" brand here in the states, I don't like how it tastes). I wonder how the above process would change also using ghee or even cacao butter.. cacao buttr is closer to butter as far as melting temp, but has no "give" like butter.
I am excited.
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Hi there, thanks for the feedback. I did bake up a few more last night and left them on the counter overnight, they were slightly less oily this morning at an ambient temp of 65F - barely left any trace on my fingers.
Since the food network link may not work outside US, see attached pdf, where I show my conversion to g and the coconut oil sub. Only other changes to recipe besides coconut oil:
- 50% each brown and white rice flours
- coconut sugar instead of brown sugar
- coconut oil was at room temp and soft (68-72F); creamed with the all the sugar and 20g water for about 5 minutes in stand mixer at high speed
@teonzo may be on to something.. I did add about 20g water to make up half the missing water from butter, but I simply added it to the sugar while collecting the other ingredients, instead of adding it while mixing. Another possibility could be the sugars, because I am out of brown sugar and the brand I like to use has been out of stock.
Even with the oily feel these are quite tasty. The next batch I might omit the extra ~20g water next time, or add it together with the other wet ingredients, and not cream the *censored* out of it. It's got to be one of these causing the problem.
I think my original conversion notes may be in the ex-girlfriend box which I don't want to get into while in isolation, but if memory servers correct, only major change was a tweak to the sugar ratio and maybe a balance of baking powder and soda. The notes were an attempt to convert the Neimann Marcus recipe to GF (it's my favorite ccc) because it's very similar to AB's. Looking at the recipe, it also spends very little time creaming the butter with sugar.
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Interesting, okay. Theoretically, then, if the ambient temperatures are in the low 60F range, the coconut oil based cookies should not have this oil, right? That would be easy to test. And conversely, if I had butter cookies out at 95-100F, they should appear oily like this?
I have plenty of the coconut dough left over, and these cookies are tasty, no issues with more experimentation
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You're right, it kind of looks like it does. The very first batch I baked yesterday morning that prompted the initial question had six cookies and all looked just fine without any spreading. Also, I've baked variations of this recipe about 1-2 years ago with no issues, and bake 1-3 loaves of bread at once on a regular basis. Bread comes out even, no issues.
I'm wondering if I should try to make a new dough. That said, I'd still like to know what causes cookies to be oily on the outside. This isn't the first time it's happened to me.
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Thanks for the response. There are recipes that use melted butter so I'm not sure that's going to be the culprit. Also, the cookies don't just have an oily feel, there's a visible sheen to then that transfers to the fingers, and you have to wipe them to keep from getting other things oily. It's almost as if the oil hadn't been absorbed - see attached photo.
I'm wondering maybe I over did the creaming and/or beating? It's clear I have problems with this dough. I baked another batch last night and this morning from the same dough (straight from the freezer, and after 24 hours in fridge), one cookie in each was perfect (bottom right in #1, and bottom left in #2 which closeup is third picture on paper towel), the rest had varying degrees of spreading from a little to extreme.. wtf. I've not seen such variety in a single bake like this before?!
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Hi:
What are some reasons cookies end up very oily to the touch? I've searched the interwebs, but there's very little info on this, most issues deal with cookie spread, and that's not my problem.
I used to have an excellent gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipe that I could make both dairy and egg free. It was loosely based on AB's "the chewy", but sadly I lost the piece of paper with my notes and changes. It's been a while since I've made them, and decided to try to make some last night for various reasons. Instead of using shortening or earth balance, in place of butter, I subbed the butter with coconut oil, using only 80% by weight (since the butter has 15-20% water). My cookies turned out very oily. This also happened with attempted ginger snap and sugar cookies a few weeks ago, and it happens to me almost always with Jaques Torres' recipe as written (no subs, except sometimes I replace chocolate with white chocolate and add macadamia nuts).
Thanks for helping me understand various factors which could lead to oily cookies.
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Over in @Kim Shook's thread from earlier this year, I offered a few videos for pasta making, including the one by a youtube home cook called Helen. I like to share her video with people new to making pasta, since some of her technique helped me make progress with my own noods. One of my work associates in northern California saw the flour she recommends for egg pasta on sale in a little italian market and sent me some. I followed her technique and recipe to satisfy my curiosity.. the dough was unusual and soft, since I'm used to working with very dry semolina pasta dough for my extruder. I was expecting mushy noods, and instead, the results were fantastic - maybe it's the isolation talking, these were better than any I've had in a restaurant or store bought. Just a quick simple toss with butter, garlic, and some veggies so the picture don't convey the chew and texture of the noods, an absolute success! Sometime in near future, I really want to try comparing it against otc all purpose flour to see whether the flour or the technique made the difference.
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On 10/17/2020 at 6:51 PM, AAQuesada said:
Found a BA video making this cookie at the shop. I don't know if thats helpful or if you've seen it.
I watched this video at least a dozen times before baking the cookies. The comments at both BA and food52 led me to believe the recipe was incomplete, and watching the video helped confirm that. My tweaks, for the most part, worked. The biggest take-away, get the right kind of buckwheat flour. The grocery store stuff like bob's red mill, uses whole grain including the hull. So one needs to use either japanese soba-ko, or grind your own from hulled seed (which is what I do since pre-covid I ended up with 25lbs of buckwheat groats, ask me no questions I'll tell you no lies). The other change was adjusting the amount of flour, sugar, and butter/fat/oil, due to the volume measurements.
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Bien Cuit's salted chocolate buckwheat cookies. After reading the comments on two websites that share the recipe, it was clear it doesn't work as written, so I changed the recipe a bit based on what I've learned over the past couple years reading this forum (woohoo, you all rock!!!). It still needs a little more tweaking, but overall, very interesting "first" for me having buckwheat sweet instead of savory, as well as creaming coconut oil with sugar (say wat?!)
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Thank you all very much for your feedback, this has been very educational!!
I wonder what would happen if mint were steeped in oil, whether cold or fried like a chili oil or sage in butter. But after experiencing the ripe aroma of mint simmering in coconut milk, not sure I'm going to take this any further. Maybe. Maybe not. 👨🔬
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Hi!
For future reference, does anyone have tips on how best to use fresh mint in baking?
In theory this sounded great: add bunch of finely chopped mint to a basic shortbread cookie dough. Dip in a mint-chocolate glaze based on coconut milk. The result tasted like an experiment gone wrong.
The shortbread cookies were actually okay, except that we used earthbalance sticks instead of butter (dairy allergy in family). The mint flavor wasn't overly strong while eating the cookie, and instead had a generic herbal-leaf flavor to it. As consumption concludes, there's a bit of mint in the background. I'm not sure using more would have been helpful.
The glaze was made by simmering a lot of hand-crushed mint in coconut milk, then pouring this through a strainer over dark chocolate, and as it melted, add a half-plop of corn syrup for added gloss. The aroma of mint simmering in coconut milk is surprisingly awful.
Hmmm. Thanks for any ideas
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On 8/29/2020 at 9:53 AM, jedovaty said:
Pour this into flip-top jars (sanitized with star-san) and check for bubbles daily (more like 3-5 times daily hahaha are we there yet?)
After experimenting with several batches, narrowed down to three possible culprits: either my star-san spray is too concentrated, using too much citrus juice, or my ice is somehow contaminated and creating issues (I pour the syrup concentrate over ice). Most likely it is the star-san, I'm not even sure it is necessary for ginger beer that's fermented over a few days? I shouldn't have changed three variables at once in the last batch! Oh, well, I'm happy, finally have my beverage
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Duuuhhhh *face palm* I knew I was overthinking this.
Thanks. I bet the cheap aluminum roasting pans would fit perfectly, have to get measurements.
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13 hours ago, Douglas K said:
@Kerry Beal It was polycarbonate. I did not have a good scraper yet then, but I do now! Amazing how much easier it is with a proper tool. This was only my second batch, so I’m learning as I go along. There’s so many things to keep track of, and I tend to rush things when I haven’t done them before. Plus figuring out how to hold things etc. while trying to get the chocolate mostly back in the bowl... it’s quite a choreography. The last batch was much better.
You must give into the messiness for now, and as you get the techniques, process, and habits down, it'll clean up. The folks here suggested pouring and scraping over parchment/wax paper, rather than directly into the bowl. This helps catch the chocolate and makes it easier to re-use; you'll just have to heat it up and/or retemper, which is not too much a big deal if you are doing small quantities. That, or get a bigger bowl.
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Hi there:
Given the specifics of my situation below, how would you accomplish a final proof without damaging a delicate dough such as croissants, high hydration demi-baguettes, etc?
I got my hands on a used, small wine fridge last year, which has worked well as a temperature controlled chamber for fermentation of anykind such as pickles, sauerkraut, sourdough, yeasted breads, etc. Depending on outside ambient temps, I use either the fridge on its own, or, a heating pad with an inkbird temp/humidity controller.
This is fantastic for things easy to cover - the lacto-ferments are in jars, most breads are in bannetons which I can stick into a plastic bag. The covers prevent the product from drying out. Unfortunately, this doesn't work well with things like croissants or high hydration demi baguettes. If I put any plastic over these, it sticks to the dough and is a real pain to get it off. I have tried putting things like jars to raise plastic wrap, but this in itself is an exercise of frustrating futility that ultimately leads to at least a couple casualties - omg plastic wrap is arrrrrghhhhh and the jars start shifting around uuuggghhh!
I found some sheet pans that come with covers - however, these are half-sheet size which don't fit into this fridge; maximum size appears to be jelly roll (16" max width and length), and jelly roll size pans don't come with covers that I could find.
Therefore, I looked into controlling humidity. Based on some research, to prevent dough from drying out, you want RH inside the fridge to be around 80-85%. Anymore, and it condensates on the dough with fluctuations in temperature, any less, and dough can dry out. Controlling humidity has turned out to be rather difficult. The inkbird I have has an option to control humidity, so I purchased a small humidifier. It... didn't work as expected. Hard to describe, but either the doughs end up sogged or dried out. RH is incredibly complex - if temperature drops, the RH increases, and may precipitate out, and then the fridge's compressor sucks out the moisture. If temperature increases, RH drops unless you add moisture to the air. It turns into something like a PID balance nightmare.
I've tried other options, such as rice/semolina flour and a tea towel. This is "okay" for the baguettes, but that won't work if I'm proofing with eggwash, or making neapolitan pizza dough (the rice flour and semolina burned at the high temps)
Maybe the better questions are, a) can anyone help me figure out how to control humidity in a small chamber, and b) should I maybe consider a 3D printed cover instead? Figuring out how to control RH would actually be fantastic, because I can then potentially use the fridge to cure meats later on.
I'm fairly certain I'm overthinking this somehow. There's got to be an easier way...
Thanks for reading.
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Hello:
I used to make ginger beer with a bug successfully, and I'm going to give it a go again this year, but before I do I'm hoping someone might be able to help identify trouble spots in my process since it has failed the last three years.
Here's my process: Bug - 1T shredded organic ginger (with peel), a cup of water, and 1T sugar dissolved. Then every 24 hours add about 1t each shredded ginger and sugar, and after several days top up with a bit of water - measurements here are all estimated, I found measuring for the bug is a waste of time, this part of the process is very forgiving. After a week this would become super fizzy, smells wonderful. I continue anywhere between 1-5 days days, depending on time for the actual brew.
For the brew, my syrup ratio is 10:1 water:sugar. I start with a ginger tea by bringing lots of ginger (I like the burn) and half my water amount to a light simmer then steep for 20-30 minutes, dissolve the sugar, then strain out the ginger over rest rest of water-weighted ice (e.g. 500g water, 500g ice, and 100g sugar). I usually squeeze 1-2 lemons or limes at this point, check to make sure temp is below 90F, then add 1/4-1/2c ginger bug. Pour this into flip-top jars (sanitized with star-san) and check for bubbles daily (more like 3-5 times daily hahaha are we there yet?). Used to take about 5 days when ambient temps were in the upper 70F range. My typical batch size is about 2L.
The last 3 years it's been a failure each time.. I get the fizzy ginger bug, but after adding to the ginger syrup, it never starts up again. I also tried a "bulk" ferment by leaving the bug (tried the entire bug batch) and syrup in a big container one time, but it never "took".
Anything I should change or tweak before I try the process again? This seems pretty standard so I've no idea what's going on but clearly I'm somehow killing the bug.
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3 hours ago, heidih said:
It is like peeling shrimp or picking crab - meditative process or group project. Hazelnuts - toast and massage in tea towel.
That doesn't work as well for me as blanching in baking-soda water, you get much much cleaner results, although, it takes forever. I know ultimately it doesn't make much of a difference, but I like all the skin removed. All the skin off. Must remove every last bit. All off. *crazy eyes*
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Dinner 2020
in Cooking
Posted
Despite all my efforts to avoid adulting Friday after work, vegetables were still forced into my meal 😒