My COOKIE Story
Well, to begin with, this story didn’t seem to carry forward too long as the initial prospects were grim and gloomy. Yes, that was my first reaction when I tried my first batch of cookies. To begin with, those cookies would harden up in no time, they did not seem to look fancier than a blob of sweet paste neatly dropped on a polished parchment paper. If at all I could rescue my cookie, it would cling to the parchment paper as though they were telling me they were inseparable. Well you’ve got a bunch of problems there. Exhausted by repetitive failures, I was prompted to give my cookie making project a good break.
Flipping through ideas, a couple of months later, I thought to myself why not treat my family with some low sugar wheat tea-time biscuits, which would do less harm to our protruding bellies. The new zeal made me forget my past failures, and I decided to begin with a new stride. We could snack on these biscuits at tea-time or with morning tea and get rid of the flour butter biscuits bought from the vendor. To my surprise, with my hand more polished and my renewed fervor, the cookies came out perfectly round. Okay, I give due credit to the fact that these cookies were shaped using a cookie-cutter but the look of perfectly shaped cookies gave me great thrill. Next the ease with which they came off the parchment paper, gave me greater glee. This was the first successful biscuit I could make and healthy too it was.
Well I did realize by now that I could try my hands on some simple, tested and tried cookie recipes. So here I jostled my mind to come up with a way of pinning those perfect recipes.Collecting my thoughts, it occurred to me to eye recipes of those awesome bakers who know no limit to achievement.
Hmmmm, Sally, hey, I found the blog to refer to ;#sallysbakingaddiction. Well and what’s ‘my have it anytime’cookie. No competitors, it’s always been the giant double chocolate chip cookie. The great part about this cookie is it’s fudginess. It doesn’t leave your taste buds for a couple of minutes. The crackly top and the rounded corners, with the chocolate chips. Crunch, munch, crunch. Well drool , drool, drool, Thanx Sally. So this got me ticking in for more recipes. Red velvet, lemon, etc etc. My project started with a low, but the repetitive attempts, got me cracking on some delicious recipes.
After discovering my faults and on the road to always learning, I realize, it’s time to share my bite size takes from my experience. Pinning down some pointers to help my readers/fellow bakers with their cookie mess. Cookies, made best at high temperatures for short time are modified depending upon the type of family to which they belong. For example, ‘Drop Cookies’ would just require you to go plop and straight in the oven. For ‘Rolled Cookies’, you would roll out your dough, slice it like a Swiss Roll and push the tray straight in the oven. Similarly, for others you would have to follow the appropriate technique. For my readers-a great tip. Allow your cookies to completely cool before you release them from the parchment paper. If your cookies aren’t spreading and you’re all bamboozled to see the face of the unshapen cookies, well,the trick is that the oven should have been preheated to reach the correct temperature and your cookie dough should not be too cold. The troubleshooting chart is too broad to list in a few sentences.
But my cookie story says keep trying, you’ll hit it right someday.
Authored by – Nandisha Gupta.
