Tag: cookies

Sourdough Discard Chocolate Chip Cookies: Worth It?

A while ago I read about a sourdough chocolate chip cookie recipe that was next level. My starter wasn’t active at the time, so I’ve been waiting to try this recipe for quite a while, and this seemed like the right time. The recipe can be found here.

I gathered the mise en place:

Before I could start mixing up cookies I had to brown the butter to get all the water content out of it. This lost water will be made up with some of the water in the sourdough starter. The goal is to start with 225g of butter and end up with 185g.

Once the butter was very foamy and the milk solids had browned I let it cool just enough that it would no longer burn me through the bowl. I weighed the browned butter and was tickled pink to see it weigh exactly 185g. I also combined the flour with the leaveners and salt at this stage.

Here’s my updated mise en place:

I mixed the butter and sugars.

Then I added the egg yolks and creamed the mixture. Normally I would cream the butter and sugar before adding anything else, but since the butter no longer has any water content it won’t cream with the sugar properly. The egg yolks have just enough water content to get the sugar to cream up nicely.

I added the starter and vanilla and mixed until homogeneous.

I added the flour and mixed until just combined.

Finally, I added the chocolate chips and pulsed in my stand mixer for just a few seconds until the chocolate was well-incorporated. At this stage the dough was very soft and malleable and quite easy to mix.

I refrigerated the dough for 4 hours (apparently that is the minimum amount of time to chill a cookie dough incorporating melted butter for the cookie to still have good structure when baked).

Once the dough was thoroughly chilled I measured the dough into 70g portions as directed and rolled each portion into a ball. I baked a few, and froze the rest.

So: the good: The cookies are soft and pillowy inside. They have good flavor, and my husband is very much enjoying being able to pull cookie dough out of the freezer and bake a fresh cookie on demand. This recipe makes A LOT of cookies.

The not so good: The cookies are are just a touch cakey, which is not my preferred cookie texture. This is likely in part because of the natural yeasts in the sourdough starter. Because the cookies go onto the baking tray cold they also don’t spread as wide or as thin as cookies that are baked straight from the mixing bowl.

The cookies don’t have enough salt to my taste, but a sprinkling of flakey salt on top solved that problem and made me feel fancy.

They also seem a bit too sweet to me. If I made these again I would use 3/4 of the sugar in the recipe. Sugar helps cookies form their structure, so this does make me worry that the texture of the cookies could be impacted by a smaller amount of sugar.

These are big cookies, but not absolutely ginormous. If I made these again I would measure out 50g portions instead of 70g.

I had such high hopes for these cookies, but after making them I feel pretty ‘Meh’ about the final product. It felt like a lot of effort to make these for a pretty average tasting cookie. I probably will not make these again (our current favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe is this one).

BUT! I learned so much from reading about the process of creating the recipe and making these cookies, and that is a huge win in my book!

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

Mastering Macarons: Tips for Perfect French Cookies

Making macarons always makes me feel like a member of the in-group. They aren’t technically that difficult to make, but you can’t be in a rush when making them, and you can’t cut corners. I’ve used the same pair of recipes to inform my macaron baking for a few years now. I like how this recipe has a lower amount of sugar, and I like the flavor suggestions for the fillings from this recipe. Both have good instructions.

As always, I started by gathering my mise en place.

I combined the almond flour and powdered sugar in a sieve over a bowl and sifted them together. Almond flour is quite a bit more course than most wheat flour, so this process takes some time and effort. It’s important to work as much of the almond flour through the sieve as possible so the ratios of the recipe don’t become skewed.

In a separate bowl I whisked the egg whites , salt, and cream of tartar until they were frothy, then turned on the speed on my KitchenAid mixer and slowly poured the granulated sugar in. I continued whipping until the eggs were at stiff peaks.

I gently folded the almond flour mixture into the egg whites in two parts, then continued folding until the batter could slowly run off my spatula to form an unbroken figure-8. This is the macaronage, and it is another part of the process that requires patience and attention to detail.

I divided the batter in half and added a few drops of food coloring, then folded the color in until the batter was evenly tinted. I also double-checked the macaronage at this point.

I poured both batters into untipped pastry bags, cut the ends of the bags, and piped the macarons.

Normally I like to wait for a dry day in the Spring or Autumn to make macarons because the air is dryer, which helps the macaron shells dry more quickly and bake dryer. The day I had set aside for baking these macarons turned out to be a rainy day, so the macarons needed to rest for an hour before the top of each cookie was sufficiently dry to be baked.

I baked the macarons for 14 minutes, rotating the baking sheet about 2/3 through each bake.

The macarons developed a lovely foot (the crinkly edge on the cookie) and the bake was gentle enough to not add any colour to the shells, but either they were ever so slightly underbaked, or the wet weather made them seem so. Either way, several shells didn’t pass quality assurance and were disposed of as test runs for my fillings. You know, in the name of science.

I baked the macaron shells 6 days before my tea party. I put the shells in a container and the container in a plastic bag and froze them until a day or two before the party. On the day of the party I filled them. The green shells got a ring of chocolate buttercream (leftover from decorating my cake) and a dollop of pistachio cream. The pink shells got a ring of chocolate buttercream and a bit of sour cherry jam.

These macarons always turn out so delicious. I’m so glad I included them in my tea party menu. I wish I had included a little more pistachio cream in the green macarons since the chocolate buttercream was much stronger in flavor than the pistachio. The tartness of the chocolate-cherry macarons was delightful, especially against the backdrop of chocolate cake.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.