mnsills said:
I some simple questions. I was making cc cookies last night with a very similar recipe to the ones above. The two above differ in terms of cornstarch vs. milk. Why the differences. Also, a really dumb question. The bottoms started to brown before the upper parts were completely done. Does that mean my oven was too hot? I had it set at 370 not the 350 specified above. Thanks, m
I just made some cc cookies from Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for More Food" book. I'm not quite the baker yet but I wanted to experiment a little bit.
The ingredients are basic.
Dry:
2 1/4 cups AP flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt (I used kosher)
Wet:
3/4 cups Sugar (I used natural cane sugar)
3/4 cups Brown Sugar
1 cup unsalted butter (I actually used 1/2 salted butter and 1/2 cup unflavored crisco)
2 egg yolks (fresh from my friend's organic farm!!!)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
Extras:
2 cups Semi Sweet Morsels
As mentioned before Cream wet ingredients, add the dry.....
yeilds 3 dozen 1 oz cookies
I like a good contrast between sweet and salty so that's why I didn't omit the salt when using salted butter which would be the standard MO.
I also used what's known as Oven Spring. I started the oven at 400 degrees for the first few minutes and brought it down to 375 for the rest of the cooking time about 15 minutes all together.
Here is where the experimentation came in (kind of inadvertantly). I used a pretty thick heavy duty cookie sheet, and thinner cheaper cookie sheet, and then for the third dozen I forgot to bring the temp down from 400 degrees.
The bottoms of the cookies made on the the thin sheet where very dark brown...burnt but edible. The cookies baked at 400 degrees for 15 minutes...forget about it...unedible. The ones baked on the heavy duty cookie sheet came out perfect. Not over cooked on the bottom at all, and they were on the bottom rack!!! They are really good!!! Think Chips Ahoy in terms of texture as opposed to Softbatch, but way better than any store bought CC Cookie
It seems to me that the using a high quality denser cookie sheet will keep those bottoms from burning. I'll be heading out to my local restaurant supplier to pick up some "half sheets". They are the size of most "civilian" models where as the full sheets in the restaurant industry are pretty large, like a hotel pan. They are made out of aluminum and are really heavy duty, and don't warp in the oven like some of the cheap models.