Happiness is a Full Sheet Pan of Cookies and an Oven Big Enough to Have Baked Them In
Two dozen cookies on one rack baked in 18 minutes. That’s production!
This is the third batch of cookies done in our Blue Star oven. We’ve found
that the oven blower should be used and that the big sheet pan should be
rotated half way through the baking cycle.
One glance at the photo, however, indicates that I forgot Chef/Owner Laura Bell’s Basic Rule of Cookies, viz., always have chocolate chips and nuts at hand to place on top of those cookies that have none on the surface when scooped. Sage advice from my catering days at A La Belle Cuisine. Surely you can see why: If one person is served a cookie with five chips on top and another–seated adjacent–gets a cookie with none, one side glance leads immediately to all manner of introspective thoughts, i.e., “Mom does like him best,” or “I think this cute waiter really is interested in me …,” or “That fool doesn’t know who paid for this lunch.”
Anyhow, this morning The Little Women was cleaning out the pantry after
a series of three dinners the past two weeks. “Why not make some cookies and get rid of these stray bags of stuff.” The stuff comprised a cup each of old chocolate chips, walnuts from the carrot cake and coconut from the shrimp (see below). So, using my chocolate chip cookie recipe as the base, we have Pantry Cookies.
Pantry Cookies
Yield: 2 dozen cookies
See Abbreviations, if needed
2C + 2T AP flour (bleached preferred)
1/2t salt
1/2t baking soda
1/2t baking powder
12T butter, melted and cooled to ambient
1C sugar
1C light brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1.5t vanilla
2/3C chocolate chips
2/3C walnuts, chopped
2/3C coconut, shredded (sweetened OK)
1. Preheat oven to 325F
2. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder and set aside
3. Cream together butter and sugars in a standing mixer
4. Add egg, yolk and vanilla
5. Add flour mixture
6. Slow mixer to its lowest speed and briefly work in chips,
walnuts and coconut, in that order
7. Scoop dough with a #36 scoop (or by hand about 1/2 golf ball size) and place well apart on a greased sheet pan or a pan with a silicone
pan liner.
8. Bake about 12-14 minutes or until cookies are set: fully shaped
with a dry surface top and with edges sharply defined and not clinging
to the silicone pad and not yet starting to brown
9. Cool cookies on the sheet pan a while before racking
NOTE: These cookies cooled out rather too crisp. Consulting
Corriher, I’ll substitute cake flour for AP flour next time and see if that helps.
