Adventures in Cookie Baking

[Afterburner]

My sweet tooth is really geared towards a short list of foodstuffs. Although I like cakes well enough, I suppose, they don't really turn my crank. Same for pies. Same for fudge. Same for most mass-produced candy.

But cookies...ah, there's what calls to my sweet tooth. And not just any cookies, either. None of these dry, dusty things they serve at Christmas -- so flavorless and dessicated that they have to be frosted with cake icing to give 'em taste and moisture. No, what compels me the most are variants of our old friend, the Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Moreover, what I really like are chewy, gooey chocolate chip cookies, preferably eaten shortly after removing them from the oven. But even a day or two later, I still want them to be chewy and somewhat gooey. With this in mind, I looked around the Internet for a "chewy" cookie recipe. The one I found and began using was Alton Brown's "The Chewy" recipe, which I have slightly modified to my own purposes. My modified recipe is at the bottom of this post.

In any case, once I had the recipe in hand, I travelled to my nearby Whole Foods to purchase the ingredients. The recipe called for (iirc) cake flour. I did not see cake flour.

What I did see, on the other hand, was a bunch of non-wheat flours, like quinoa flour, millet flour, rye flour, barley flour, and so on, and so forth.

And my brain said "HRM!"

So I grabbed a bag of barley flour and went home to bake the cookies.

Understand that, at this point in my life (which was back sometime in the summer), I had not the first clue about baking. I didn't know that monkeying about with baking recipes can sometimes produce disastrous results. I had no concept of "agglutinators." I had no idea what made one flour different from another. All I knew was that the recipe called for a type of flour that I couldn't find, so why not just get some funky, weird-ass flour instead and see what happened?

Alton Brown's original recipe called for 13-15 minutes in the oven at 350F. First time I baked these cookies, following that recipe exactly, my first batch came out as little carbonized hockey pucks unfit for human consumption. After some trial and error, I got the cookies to stop coming out burnt.

And they were pretty tasty. The texture was different, of course, since I was using barley flour instead of cake flour (or even regular flour). But they weren't bad.

This started me down my current path of cookie experimentation. So far, the flours I've used have been:

Barley - An okay cookie. Not fantastic, but not bad. However, these were my first, and I hadn't standardized my recipe at this stage, so I need to revisit them.

Rye - Like the barley, an okay cookie. Also one I need to revisit because my memories are nebulous about this one.

Oat - Cookies made with 100% oat flour are mighty freakin' tasty. The higher oil content of oats gives the dough a silky texture that's simply amazing. However, they don't hang together well, so it's best to let 'em cool down a bit before trying to scrape 'em off the baking sheet.

Blue Corn Meal - Yep, you read that right. I made cookies with blue corn meal. My first batch, I made without doing anything to the corn meal prior to making the dough. Consequently, the cookies were VERY crumbly and VERY gritty. Nice flavor, though. Tasted like a sweet corn muffin with chocolate chips in it. Second batch, I soaked the corn meal in with the melted butter for 20 minutes on low heat to soften it up. This helped noticiably, though the cookies were still grittier than I would prefer. These cookies also fall apart when warm, and so need some cooling time before attempting to take them off the cookie sheet.

White Rice Flour - Another gritty flour. I didn't like these much at all. The texture was like eating fine-grained sand, and the flavor didn't provide much of an incentive to put up with the texture. I also tried soaking this flour in with the melted butter for 20 minutes prior to cooking, and it helped a little, but not enough to make me wanna finish off the bag of the rice flour.

Quinoa - I was a little dubious about this flour at first, because the smell REEKS of freshly hulled beans, and that smell continued unabated even after the dough was made. However, the cookies were fantastic. They have a faintly nutty flavor that would make you think the cookies had been made with some amount of peanut butter. They also hang together really well. Oddly, they don't flatten out like the other doughs, and instead tend to puff up a little.

Buckwheat - Very strong nutty flavor. Very dark cookie. Very good.

Left to try (at least, this is all that's on the Whole Foods shelves that I haven't tried yet): Whole wheat, Millet, Amaranth, and Kamut.

I'll let you know how it goes...

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Alton Brown's "The Chewy" chocolate chip cookie recipe, with modifications by Yours Truly.

2 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoons baking soda

2 sticks unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons milk

1 1/2 teaspoons irish creme (original recipe called for 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract)

1 whole egg

1 egg yolk

1 regular bag of chocolate chips

1) Mix flour, salt, baking soda. Set aside.

2) Melt butter, sugar, and brown sugar together. (Original recipe called for simply melting the butter and not the sugar or brown sugar.)

3) When butter, sugar, and brown sugar are melted, pour into mixing bowl and mix with electric hand mixer (or stand mixer, if that's your bag) until butter is no longer seperated. Takes a minute or two. Doesn't hurt to mix a little longer, either, in order to cool down the mixture so the chocolate chips won't melt when you add 'em later.

4) Add milk, irish creme, egg, and egg yolk, then mix with mixer until mixture is smooth. (Add the egg and egg yolk last, otherwise they'll get slightly cooked by the (still warm) butter/sugar mixture as you add in the other ingredients.)

5) While mixing, pour in the flour and mix until smooth. You'll probably need to scrape the bowl a time or two.

6) Add chocolate chips and fold in with a spatula.

7) Stick dough in fridge and chill for a few hours.

8) After a few hours have passed and you're ready to bake the cookies, pre-heat oven to 350F.

9) Once oven is fully heated, spoon dough onto baking sheets. Put cookies in oven, and set your timer for 7 minutes. They may be done in 7 minutes. Or they may not. But 7 minutes is a good time to check 'em and see how they're doing.

[K8memphis]

Very interesting - umm, ever think about substituting your irish cream* for the milk & keeping the vanilla???

*You do mean Bailey's???

signed,

a cookieholic

[Afterburner]

Very interesting - umm, ever think about substituting your irish cream* for the milk & keeping the vanilla???

Can't say that I have. Vanilla extract is alcoholic. Irish creme is alcoholic. So I'm just using one type of alcohol-based flavoring for another.

*You do mean Bailey's???

St. Brendan's, actually. It's richer to my tastebuds, and also cheaper.

[K8memphis]

Can't say that I have.  Vanilla extract is alcoholic.  Irish creme is alcoholic.  So I'm just using one type of alcohol-based flavoring for another.

*You do mean Bailey's???

St. Brendan's, actually. It's richer to my tastebuds, and also cheaper.

←

Wull, actually vanilla is a flavoring and the irish cream is a drink. I think you'll get more flavor bang for your buck with the vanilla. I mean true you do have alcohol and alcohol but not true in flavoring strengths.

It sounds wonderful in chocolate chip cookies. But for me - I would use the greater liquid amount for the irish cream.

C'mon, if you're up to using barley flour and blue corn meal

If I ever get off this diet (we got a wedding in May) I'm gonna do the irish cream in some - great idea, Afterburner!!

[chefpeon]

I gotta say....sometimes because of all the experience I have as a PC and all the "rules" I learned in pastry school, I somehow forget that in a way I can be so rigid when it comes to

new ideas. I like to be a rebel and a rule breaker. At first I'm thinkin'.....

THIS PERSON USED BARLEY FLOUR??? What kind of insanity is that?

Then I thought......sheesh....why not? But I do admit I laughed at the blue corn meal thing.

But you got guts and imagination. That'll take you far. Truly.

If I weren't so afraid to waste ingredients, I'd probably experiment more freely. My inner

frugalness prevents me from buying ingredients I'm not sure of...especially expensive ingredients. Plus I never have enough time in the day to screw around....wish I did!

Thanks for posting the results of your experiments!

By the way, have you tried that recipe using bread flour? White bread flour. I use that recipe myself except I use bread flour. It makes the PERFECT chocolate chip cookie as far as I'm concerned.

And in the grocery store, you can find cake flour in the baking section.....it's in a relatively small box, and it's called "Softasilk".

Edited to add:

Have you tried combining flours also? In the instance of your oat cookies, you could use a little wheat flour in there.....it would aid in the cookies holding together better while still getting the flavor you like from your oat flour.

Edited January 20, 2005 by chefpeon (log)

[Afterburner]

Wull, actually vanilla is a flavoring and the irish cream is a drink. I think you'll get more flavor bang for your buck with the vanilla. I mean true you do have alcohol and alcohol but not true in flavoring strengths.

Possibly.

On the other hand (and this is meant simply as a datapoint for your consideration, rather than a rebuttal, since you could write what I know about baking on the back of a postage stamp and still have room left over for the National Anthem), when I first began baking these cookies and monkeying about with the recipe, I tried several different types of hooch to replace the vanilla extract, and I used a lot more than the recipe called for.

What I found was that 3 tablespoons of any kind of hooch produced a strong, very noticable flavor of that hooch in the finished cookie. One of the cookies I made had 3 tablespoons of 151 rum in it, and hoo boy, you could smell the rum from across the room whenever someone opened the cookie jar.

Which is perfectly fine if that's yer bag and all, but I was looking for a more subtle flavor. Especially since I was monkeying about with the flours and wanted to be able to taste the flour and not just the hooch. (This is one of the reasons I can't really say how the rye flour tasted in the cookies. The first batch was overpowered by the rum, the second batch fell victim to an unfortunate decision to try carob chips instead of chocolate chips, and the rest of the flour was used in half-and-half batches where the rye was cut with all-purpose flour.)

[Afterburner]

At first I'm thinkin'.....THIS PERSON USED BARLEY FLOUR??? What kind of insanity is that?

Then I thought......sheesh....why not? But I do admit I laughed at the blue corn meal thing.

Shoulda seen 'em. They were greenish-brown, with large, noticable grits. My friends were dubious, at least until they tried 'em. But you wound up picking grits out of your teeth for a good 10-15 minutes afterwards.

But you got guts and imagination. That'll take you far. Truly.

I dunno about "guts." I think it's really more just "ignorance" combined with an unchecked sense of adventure.

Have you tried combining flours also? In the instance of your oat cookies, you could use a little wheat flour in there.....it would aid in the cookies holding together better while still getting the flavor you like from your oat flour.

Yep.

My first batch of cookies with a new bag of flour is made with 100% of that flour, whatever it is. The second batch is made with 1 1/4 cup of the new flour and 1 cup of all-purpose flour.

The mixture produces cookies that are remarkably similar. The rye, barley, and oat cookies made with 1 cup of all-purpose flour and 1 1/4 cup of the other flour were pretty indistinguishable to my palate. The blue corn meal and the white rice flour were pretty noticeably different due to the gritty texture, and the corn meal still provided a nice amount of "sweet corn muffin" flavor. The quinoa flour also made for a different cookie when mixed with 1 cup of all-purpose flour -- they were still puffy and still had that nutty flavor. Haven't tried the buckwheat/all-purpose flour mix, as I just got the buckwheat flour last week. But soon. Very soon...

[K8memphis]

On the other hand (and this is meant simply as a datapoint for your consideration, rather than a rebuttal, since you could write what I know about baking on the back of a postage stamp and still have room left over for the National Anthem)...

What I found was that 3 tablespoons of any kind of hooch produced a strong, very noticable flavor of that hooch in the finished cookie.  One of the cookies I made had 3 tablespoons of 151 rum in it, and hoo boy, you could smell the rum from across the room whenever someone opened the cookie jar.

...Which is perfectly fine if that's yer bag and all, but I was looking for a more subtle flavor... 

←

You are awesome - I love your style! Baking is such a freaking wild endeavor in such a (seemingly opposite) controlled environment. I can always sum that up in the fact that brownies were 'created' by an accident. Somebody's chocolate cake bombed & viola the birth of the brownie!

I love what the Japanese are doing to bread baking - just blowing the socks off old stodgey methods & ways of thinking because they are fresh & new with it, unencumbered by the 'old school'. Super creative - the sky's the limit.

The "hoo boy" part is killing me

I agree carob is good in it's own right as carob only - there is no substitute for chocolate.

Wull, you may already know this...but if you put a piece of bread down under the cookies in your cookie jar it will go stale and that will help keep your cookies moist. And if you put several slices, it will re-moisten them too. Since you like the chewy ones.

You can also set them over mildly steamy water on a rack and I set mine in the microwave to re-moisten or or or like use a skillet and the rack and just set the lid on & that will do it - of couse - not enough steam to condense & drip back down - let it set a while y'know.

So in a few months I'll try the 2T irish cream & let you know. Hmmm wonder how those chocolate liqueurs would do in cookies??? And and and I wonder what flavor would remain if I boiled it first to dampen the hootchiness...maybe just one tablespoon...food for thought - great idea, Afterburner!

Edited January 20, 2005 by K8memphis (log)

[jgarner53]

Wow, you've got courage. I would never have tried in a million years putting blue corn meal (or barley flour or anythiing other than flour) into a cookie.

And I agree with Anne. AB's chewy cookie recipe is my current favorite and colloquially called "crack" cookies by my husband's friends, who can easily demolish a batch.

[viva]

I love that you used 151 rum. Most folks might use a rum a little lower in the rum food chain (dark rum, spiced rum). But 151 - straight to the top. Heh.

[Afterburner]

I agree carob is good in it's own right as carob only

I'm not even sure I'd go that far. Your mileage may, of course, vary, but I thought the carob was quite ass-tastic, personally. We ended up using the resulting rye-and-carob-chip cookies for dog treats.

The dog thought they were fantastic, of course.

Wull, you may already know this...but if you put a piece of bread down under the cookies in your cookie jar it will go stale and that will help keep your cookies moist. And if you put several slices, it will re-moisten them too. Since you like the chewy ones.

Well, my "cookie jar" is actually one of those large plastic Ziploc containers that are all the rage with these kids today. Not a zip-top bag, but a molded plastic thing with a lid that seals up pretty tightly.

The cookies stay pretty moist for several days in those things, which is about how long it takes to go through a batch.

Hmmm wonder how those chocolate liqueurs would do in cookies???

Pretty good, actually. One of my first batches was with Dark Creme de Cacao.

[Afterburner]

Wow, you've got courage. I would never have tried in a million years putting blue corn meal (or barley flour or anythiing other than flour) into a cookie.

Again, I dunno that it's courage. Just a willingness to experiment. I do the same thing when I brew beer. Some folks get into homebrewing so they can recreate the classic styles. Me, I got into homebrewing so I could brew weird shit that I can't get in a store. Like the beer I make with molasses, coffee, and chocolate syrup...

[Afterburner]

I love that you used 151 rum.  Most folks might use a rum a little lower in the rum food chain (dark rum, spiced rum).  But 151 - straight to the top.  Heh.

Just happened to be the rum I had on hand. I use 151 in my vapor lock when I brew beer, to help things stay extra sanitary.

[Afterburner]

Tonight's wacky chocolate chip cookie flour: Stone Ground Whole Wheat

It's a good thing I'd read The Joy of Cooking. (Or was it Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food?) I'd bought a bag of stone ground whole wheat flour last week to make some beer/cheese bread, and had I not read about how whole wheat flour needs to be refrigerated to keep the oils in the wheat from going rancid, I woulda just put it up in the cabinet with the other flours. Nothing on the package indicated that it needed refrigeration.

The buckwheat cookies had disappeared earlier this week, so it was time for a new batch. And I figured I'd take the stone ground whole wheat for a test drive.

Yowza.

This flour produced the thickest, gummiest dough yet out of all the flours I've tried. It was dense. It was lumpy. It had visible bits in it. Really, it looked like what oatmeal would look like if it had grown up in reform school. The flavor was nutty and the texture was predictably mealy, but not in an off-putting way.

The resulting cookies were impressive. VERY good. Excellent flavor, with hints of caramel and molasses. The cookies were large, spread well, and had some heft to them. They looked very rustic and earthy. Like, if Abe Lincoln's log cabin could make chocolate chip cookies, this is what they'd look like.

Stone ground whole wheat flour is now tied with oat flour as my fave alternative flour with which to make chocolate chip cookies. If you've read this thread so far and have felt a slight tug on your creative impulses, urging you to experiment with unusual flours, THIS is the flour to start off with to get your feet wet.

Edited January 22, 2005 by Afterburner (log)