I'm frustrated! Really frustrated.
I made cookies for my dear TC, who loves cookies. I haven't made any in a while because the temptation is too great for me to resist. (When making cookies, I eat enough dough to possibly get salmonella poisoning. One for the cookie sheet, one for my tummy. Repeat.) But yesterday I figured since I had skipped breakfast and lunch, I could do with some cookie dough consumption.
So, I set out to make cookies that would not be dog biscuit consistency the next day. I've tried a variety of recipes, including one that Brianne gave me a while back. Her recipe resulted in soft chewy cookies, but unfortunately the Huz doesn't prefer oatmeal cookies, and since I'm really making the cookies for him I ought to pay attention to his preferences. So I used a high altitude chocolate chip cookie recipe that I found online and got rave reviews from people who live at a much higher altitude than I. The result: Last night, the cookies were soft and gooey. Today, they are crunchy and hard. Tasty, but you could break a tooth. (I might be exaggerating a tad. But they are not for the weak of molars.)
I'm frustrated. Seriously. I carefully measured each ingredient. I followed every direction. I timed how long I allowed the cookies to cool on the sheet, I timed how long I let them cool on the rack. I put them away immediately so the dry air wouldn't suck the life out of them. The only thing I changed in the recipe is that I used 2 cups of chocolate chips, instead of the 1 cup it called for. And still today, this morning, as I was having breakfast, I heard TC crunching away on his breakfast cookies. (Yes, sometimes he eats cookies for breakfast. It's not weird in Argentina. Let's get over it and move on.)
Enraged at the crunching, I went to the cookie jar to get myself a cookie to try. And sure enough, I couldn't hear the morning news over the noise of my chewing.
W.T. Heck? Seriously! Chocolate chip cookies are like the most basic recipe on the planet, and I manage to goof those up.
But I will not be defeated. I will persevere. Next time, I will change the following: use only 1 cup of chocolate chips (maybe those somehow make a difference in the texture of the cookie), and use my light colored cookie sheets, and maybe cook for less time.
Any other suggestions?
I hate when this happens! The only thing I can think of is that the recipe calls for butter. Sometimes I've found butter used alone makes the cookies go hard. In most of the cookies I make that don't go hard (unless I cook them too long) I've found that Crisco is one of the ingredients. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't think it's weird at all to eat cookies for breakfast!
Underbake them. I always use the recipe on the choc chip bag with no altitude adjustments, but I take them out when they're light brown and still gooey in the middle. They're soft the next day even if I leave them out.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't overthink it. I read an article abt making souffle where they gave the same recipe to chefs and home cooks who'd never made a souffle, and most of the home cooks' souffles came out perfect while a bunch of the chefs' fell. The chefs knew all the precautions but overthought it.
Good luck!
R&B and Heidi both said things I agree with. Margarine and underbaking do help. Also, I hate to say it, but I suspect that the cookie jar isn't totally airtight. What I would try would be putting a big ziploc in the cookie jar and making sure that it gets zipped up.If it doesn't work then it's a recipe issue, but if it does then that's one culprit you can blame.
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