YES!, a photo by js_hale on Flickr.
I am a cook through and through. I therefore have no business doing any baking, but right now, I can't help myself. The fixation on baking and baked goods in general started about a month ago, and continued into early May when my grandmother, Nana, passed away. It's so cliche, I know - but the loss and sadness made me want to bake. I actually schlepped a loaf of banana bread to Arkansas when I attended the funeral, not knowing who would eat it. The urge to bake makes sense - I wanted to provide comfort to myself, and to my family. When I think about it more deeply - witnessing a mixture rise as it incubates in the oven... and in the end, you've produced something that in turn gives sustenance. With this latest project (pictured above), I attribute my success entirely to Cook's Illustrated.
This was my very first batch of chocolate chip cookies, and they turned out great. A recent issue had a feature article on the perfect chocolate chip cookie. CI is famous for baking hundreds of batches of the same product before presenting the prize specimen. The articles chronicle the trials and errors, and get into the science of cooking, which I find fascinating. I am sure that I will continue extolling the virtues of Cook's Illustrated in future blogs.
The reason why I should stick to cooking (and bake as little as possible) is that I cannot stop myself from experimenting. Once I tasted (ha-ha - get it?) success with this first batch of cookies, I turned my focus to the cookie recipe from The Sneaky Chef by Missy Chase Lapine, a book of recipes which mask healthy foods in kids' standard favorites. This concept is extremely appealing to me, having a child who is - ahem - averse to eating nearly all vegetables and most meats in their original form. I also FIRMLY believe in maximizing enjoyment of every family meal, so if that means that he refuses to eat green vegetables on his plate, so be it. He'll have them in his waffles tomorrow morning and he won't even know it.
In Lapine's recipe book, vegetables like spinach, broccoli, peas, etc. become odorless, tasteless purees and juices which can then be mixed into pancake batters, pasta dishes, pizzas, grilled cheese and so on to produce nutrient-rich kid food. Ms. Lapine's recipe for chocolate chip cookies includes ingredients like rolled oats, whole wheat flour, wheat germ (yeah, yeah) and......WHITE BEAN PUREE! Really?? Upon tasting the raw dough, I had a total Eureka moment - I was reminded immediately of various bean pastes that I've had in Japan. Azuki beans are used regularly in all kinds of desserts - an pan, ohagi (which I blogged about last week), and all kinds of manju. I would not be surprised if Ms. Lapine took some inspiration from Japanese cuisine for this recipe.
ANYWAY, my inner cook's incessant curiosity and penchant for experimenting got the better of me - I wanted to borrow a technique that had worked so well in the previous CI recipe and use it in the Sneaky Chef recipe. It involved one ingredient: butter. A cardinal rule in baking is "DO NOT experiment" - follow the recipe exactly as it is written, no exceptions. Sneaky Chef wanted me to beat the butter with other wet ingredients. Temperature of the butter is not specified, so one would assume that it calls for chilled or softened butter. Not only did I melt the butter - I BROWNED it, as per the CI recipe's instructions.
I knew I was in trouble once I put the dry ingredients in: the consistency of my dough was downright runny! There was no way that it was going to form the balls that you need for well-formed cookies. It looked like shortbread batter, but tasted great - still, I envisioned thin blobs of burnt dough on my cookie sheet. I was already way off course, so I decided to continue improvising. Based on previous research (not experience!), I knew that warm, runny batters would probably not form properly. So I put all of the dough into an 8" square baking dish and said a little prayer as I slipped it into the oven.
In my high school cafeteria, they used to make these ridiculously good cookie bars that had the caramel color and toffee flavor of chocolate chip cookies, but the consistency of brownies. I was addicted to them and ate them nearly every day for 3 years. My hope was that my wayward dough would turn into something similar to what I remembered.
Lo and behold...
Against all odds - SUCCESS!! Perfectly browned and crispy edges, cooked through in the center, slightly cakey consistency, about three-quarters of an inch thick throughout, and well-balanced flavor. I could totally taste the difference in the ingredients from the previous batch of cookies - this was still decadent, but not downright sinful. You could taste the whole grains, but it didn't bother me a bit. And it's worth mentioning that there was absolutely no sign of the beans.
Here's the really beautiful part - I had to get the whole thing out of the pan to cool on a wire rack. I didn't make my parchment sling a head of time, so there was no easy way to shoehorn it out. Using an otoshi-buta (a small wooden lid used in Japanese cooking), I slowly flipped the pan over, easing the top side of the cookie onto the lid. It glided out of the pan and landed intact. Then I sandwiched it - otoshi-buta on the top side, wire rack on the bottom, and gently eased it back onto its right side.
WOO-HOO!! Cut into 9 squares and gone by sundown!
From this point, I might play around and come up with my own original recipe, at which time I will post details. Can't help it. I'm a cook. If you're dying to know the original recipe(s), I suggest subscribing to CI online - it's a very affordable yearly subscription, and I highly recommend it. You would be surprised at the wealth of useful information, if you do any cooking at all. As for The Sneaky Chef, it's a great book if you have kids. Thanks to that book, I have had great success getting Jacob to eat purees of broccoli, spinach and peas masked in pesto sauce!
