Meeting-friendly snacks to bake

[MelissaH]

On 6/14/2016 at 3:02 PM, Anna N said:

As an aside what I really wanted to make was salty caramel brownies from the New York Times but my baking cabinet  needs some replenishment before I can attempt much of anything.  

 

That recipe is SO high on my list, too!

[Anna N]

 

 This is a half recipe of cowboy cookies from the New York Times. They contain chocolate chips, coconut, oats  and pecans.   I tried one and I know why they are called cowboy cookies.  Put a couple of these in your saddlebag, one for you and one for your horse, and you can ride from Oregon to Mexico without stopping to refuel.

[ElsieD]

6 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 

 This is a half recipe of cowboy cookies from the New York Times. They contain chocolate chips, coconut, oats  and pecans.   I tried one and I know why they are called cowboy cookies.  Put a couple of these in your saddlebag, one for you and one for your horse, and you can ride from Oregon to Mexico without stopping to refuel.

 

I saw that recipe and wondered what they were like.  Aside from their "staying power" were they tasty?  They look like a soft cookie, are they?

[Anna N]

@ElsieD

 

 They are certainly tasty enough with all their inclusions.   I would definitely not call them a soft cookie.  Might depend on how long you cook them but if you are looking for a soft cookie I would certainly suggest you find another recipe.  

[rotuts]

@Anna N 

 

too bad your meetings are so far away from me.  Id gladly show up just for the snacks.

 

[ElsieD]

My husband is on our condo board and they have a formal meeting once a month.  I always bake something for him to take and decided to post what I made. There are 5 board members plus 2 people from our management company, so it is not a big meeting.  Today they got chocolate chip cookies and dulce de leche cheesecake tartlets.  

[ElsieD]

I missed posting what the condo board got for their end of December meeting but for tomorrow's they are getting Lemon-Poppy Seed cookies.

[Anna N]

Trying to get back in the saddle again. These are the chewy oatmeal raisin cookies from the Smitten KITCHEN site.   Just making sure I do not send you off, as I have done before, into adult rated sites

 

[Anna N]

 Apparently the oatmeal raisin cookies were greeted by open mouths after so many weeks with nothing but donuts. Consequently I felt compelled to try again for this week's meeting. 

Snickerdoodles. 

 

[MelissaH]

Ooooh, I love snickerdoodles. They're one cookie I find difficult to make, because I usually do a full batch of dough and immediately scoop it into cookie-size balls. They stay in the fridge overnight, and then get frozen flat on a parchment-lined cookie sheet before getting bagged and baked a few at a time. The problem with snickerdoodles, of course, is that one of the defining features is the cinnamon sugar coating that's applied just before baking. I haven't yet found a way to manage this, because it doesn't stay intact during the freezing process, and it's impractical to make a small amount of cinnamon sugar for coating, say, half a dozen cookies each time I want to bake a few for dessert for the two of us. I like your solution of just baking the whole batch and giving them away to get them out of the house.

 

I think it was Dorie Greenspan that espoused a slight variation of using cardamom sugar instead of cinnamon sugar as the coating. I'm not sure if it would then really be a snickerdoodle, but I bet it would be tasty!

[Fernwood]

2 hours ago, MelissaH said:

The problem with snickerdoodles, of course, is that one of the defining features is the cinnamon sugar coating that's applied just before baking. I haven't yet found a way to manage this, because it doesn't stay intact during the freezing process, and it's impractical to make a small amount of cinnamon sugar for coating, say, half a dozen cookies each time I want to bake a few for dessert for the two of us.

 

Cinnamon sugar stores well.  We use so much that we keep it in a jar with a shaker top.  It actually seems to clump less than plain sugar.  

Also, I never measure to mix a batch; I just add cinnamon (or sugar) until the color looks right to me.  Don't let that be a barrier!

[Thanks for the Crepes]

@Anna N , very tempting snickerdoodles. I can almost smell them. 

 

@MelissaH, I also keep a batch of cinnamon sugar in a shaker jar with a screw top (a recycled McCormick's glass spice jar) for cinnamon toast on a whim or whatever. It keeps really well. I mix by eye too and like mine pretty dark. I like the idea of freezing the dough to bake up a few fresh and hot ones at a time so much I will probably steal copy it. 

[Anna N]

 

 So I checked my supply cabinet for baking this week and spotted a jar of peanut butter.   I decided I would like to make peanut butter cookies. I checked eG and found the Peanut Butter Cookie bake off but I really wanted a very simple classic cookie and didn't see one in that topic.   In the past I have had some success with the Land O Lakes recipes for cookies so decided to use theirs.  Much to my chagrin after 12 minutes in the oven these cookies were not much more than cookie dough. I sought help from my baking mentor but the response was quite unhelpful.  But in the act of articulating my problem I discovered the solution.  I said, "they are just like cookie dough". When my brain finally clicked into gear I realized that I should attempt to bake them further.   They took 2 1/2 times more time in the oven than the recipe called for.   So they were in there for about 25 minutes all told.   Yeah, I know what you're thinking. But I put two different oven thermometers in my oven and it is bang on as it was a few weeks ago when I tested it for the Harvard course.   I have no explanation. While they are perfectly good cookies and I will not be ashamed to send them off to the meeting people they do seem a bit on the greasy side to me.  

[dscheidt]

On 2/13/2017 at 9:31 PM, Thanks for the Crepes said:

@Anna N , very tempting snickerdoodles. I can almost smell them. 

 

@MelissaH, I also keep a batch of cinnamon sugar in a shaker jar with a screw top (a recycled McCormick's glass spice jar) for cinnamon toast on a whim or whatever. It keeps really well. I mix by eye too and like mine pretty dark. I like the idea of freezing the dough to bake up a few fresh and hot ones at a time so much I will probably steal copy it. 

My freezer is full of vacuum bags of cookies ready to bake.  I put a sheet pan's worth of cookies in each bag, but you could do fewer if you want smaller batches.  Labeling is important; it's pretty hard to tell many cookies apart when they're in frozen balls.  I also label with full date and baking instructions.  In a good vacuum bag (I have a chamber machine) and a cold frreezer, they seem to be good for at least four months, probably quite a bit longer but we turn them over faster than that.

Oh, if you ever need to get a two year old really mad, let her help you make cookies and then not bake any!

[Anna N]

 Well the peanut butter cookies have already been devoured and the meeting isn't even until tomorrow. My son-in-law comes every second Tuesday to put out my garbage and I gave him the cookies this morning to save him a trip this evening. He took them to work and just sent me a text to say they are all gone and were loved by all.  Lest you think I'm bragging this is not the most discerning audience.

[Anna N]

 

 Chocolate chip cookies made with mostly Hershey's chips but I also threw in a few pieces of a better quality milk chocolate just for the heck of it.   Son-in-law will not get his hands on these until tomorrow evening. Not that it matters to me whether they get eaten at the meeting or not-- only that it is not garbage collection week for me so I won't tell him about them until tomorrow evening when he can pick them up on his way home from work (my usual habit).  

[ElsieD]

On February 13, 2017 at 0:20 PM, Anna N said:

 Apparently the oatmeal raisin cookies were greeted by open mouths after so many weeks with nothing but donuts. Consequently I felt compelled to try again for this week's meeting. 

Snickerdoodles. 

 

 

@Anna N I was inspired by your snickerdoodles to make some for John's board meeting tomorrow.  The recipe I planned to use was from the NY Times cooking site.  However, it says they make a soft cookie and I always thought they were crisp.  Subsequent googling confirms this.  Was yours a soft cookie also?  If they are, do you think leaving the cream of tartar out make them crispier?  

[Anna N]

 I tend to think that if the recipe does not include cream of tartar then they are something other than a snickerdoodle. I have absolutely no logical reason for thinking this way.   The cookies I make seem to fall somewhere in the middle between crispy and soft.  Not even sure I would call it crispy. I almost need another word to describe the texture.   There is a bit of chewiness and a bit of crunchiness is as close so I can come to an accurate description as I see it.  

[ElsieD]

Thank you.  I'll go ahead and make the recipe as written with the cream of tartar.

[MelissaH]

Definitely use the cream of tartar and baking soda. (Together, they make a homemade baking powder, and one of the defining features of a snickerdoodle IMHO.) My current favorite recipe is Joanne Chang's, and I always make and portion the dough into balls the day before. They stay in the fridge overnight, and then get coated in cinnamon sugar and baked the next day.

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, MelissaH said:

Definitely use the cream of tartar and baking soda. (Together, they make a homemade baking powder, and one of the defining features of a snickerdoodle IMHO.) My current favorite recipe is Joanne Chang's, and I always make and portion the dough into balls the day before. They stay in the fridge overnight, and then get coated in cinnamon sugar and baked the next day.

 

I made them using the NY Times recipe and used baking soda and cream of tartar.  I compared that recipe to Joanne Chang's and they are almost the same.  The differences are that my recipe was halved, it called for a bit more flour and butter, did not mention beating the butter and sugar beyond mixing it, did not call for flattening the cookie before baking and called for an oven temp of 375 not 350.  It also did not call for chilling the dough.  I'll try the Joanne one next time.  I just had one and they are delicious, soft in the middle and sort of crispy around the edges.  Quick to make too, which is a bonus.  Edited to add that my recipe also called for vanilla.

Edited March 8, 2017 by ElsieD
Edited to add that my recipe also called for vanilla (log)

[Anna N]

They look great. 

[Anna N]

 

Lemon sugar cookies. 

[Anna N]

With apologies to our Aussie and Kiwi members, who thought that ANZAC biscuits were a good idea?  

 

 The biscuits on the far left were made first. I was just barely able to get them to stay together long enough to bake them.    When I returned to the dough to scoop more, it was quickly apparent that I would not be able to form them into anything.  So I added a little more butter and a little more golden syrup. Perhaps two more tablespoons of butter and 1 teaspoon of syrup.   Bad move.  

 

 I used this recipe.

[ElsieD]

30 minutes ago, Anna N said:

With apologies to our Aussie and Kiwi members, who thought that ANZAC biscuits were a good idea?  

 

 The biscuits on the far left were made first. I was just barely able to get them to stay together long enough to bake them.    When I returned to the dough to scoop more, it was quickly apparent that I would not be able to form them into anything.  So I added a little more butter and a little more golden syrup. Perhaps two more tablespoons of butter and 1 teaspoon of syrup.   Bad move.  

 

 I used this recipe.

 

I tried making ANZAC biscuits once, maybe a year ago.  I can't remember the source of the recipe as I deleted the recipe after making them.  They were a dismal failure.  Too bad, too, because I love oatmeal type cookies.  It would be nice if someone could post a proven recipe.  If that were to happen, I'd give it another go.