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boilingwater2009-12-27 12:24 pm
jjhunter) wrote in boilingwater2009-12-27 12:24 pm
Entry tags:
eternity in a bowl of cookie dough
gentle readers, i have a conundrum.
for many years, my signature cookie for gifts and contributions to inefficient fund-raising endeavors has been the humble oatmeal scotchie, the recipe for which conveniently located on the back of every bag i buy of nestle butterscotch morsels. on each occasion, i would smugly anticipate the happy result of my picturesque culinary efforts. ten minutes into the recipe, however, i would suddenly recollect the sheer amount of time remaining and forthcoming toll on my wrists with passionate loathing. yet i consoled myself with the thought that two hours plus of hard work was simply the price i had to pay for my four dozen allotments of unhealthy delight.
imagine my joy at discovering an intriguing new recipe of equivalent impressiveness that only required a mere twenty minutes to prepare, for a grand total of thirty-four minutes to yield the first tray of total forty-eight cookies. these cranberry orange cookies seemed an excellent addition to my usual holiday baking, permitting me to economize with twice the number of cookie-gifts for at most only a fifty-percent increase in time.
but it was not to be so. i was stuck in my kitchen for a straight four and a half hours, causing much concern and chastisement from the other inhabitants of my dwelling.
to add insult to injury, i discovered that the nestle website blithely lists the prep time for oatmeal scotchies as ten minutes, and the cook time as seven. these figures, i wish to emphasize for those not following carefully, are half those posted for cranberry orange cookies.
this is not a state of affairs that can be permitted to continue. my dignity, my self-respect, and the minor matter of my reputation as competent in the kitchen depend on closing the achievement gap between myself and those posting enthusiastic reviews on cooking websites with frequent resort to all caps. i have decided to throw myself on the collective mercy of crowd-sourcing. listen closely, dear readers, for i do not say this lightly: help me, omnomnom kenobi et al. you're my least embarrassing source of hope.
x-posted toomnomnom
for many years, my signature cookie for gifts and contributions to inefficient fund-raising endeavors has been the humble oatmeal scotchie, the recipe for which conveniently located on the back of every bag i buy of nestle butterscotch morsels. on each occasion, i would smugly anticipate the happy result of my picturesque culinary efforts. ten minutes into the recipe, however, i would suddenly recollect the sheer amount of time remaining and forthcoming toll on my wrists with passionate loathing. yet i consoled myself with the thought that two hours plus of hard work was simply the price i had to pay for my four dozen allotments of unhealthy delight.
imagine my joy at discovering an intriguing new recipe of equivalent impressiveness that only required a mere twenty minutes to prepare, for a grand total of thirty-four minutes to yield the first tray of total forty-eight cookies. these cranberry orange cookies seemed an excellent addition to my usual holiday baking, permitting me to economize with twice the number of cookie-gifts for at most only a fifty-percent increase in time.
but it was not to be so. i was stuck in my kitchen for a straight four and a half hours, causing much concern and chastisement from the other inhabitants of my dwelling.
to add insult to injury, i discovered that the nestle website blithely lists the prep time for oatmeal scotchies as ten minutes, and the cook time as seven. these figures, i wish to emphasize for those not following carefully, are half those posted for cranberry orange cookies.
this is not a state of affairs that can be permitted to continue. my dignity, my self-respect, and the minor matter of my reputation as competent in the kitchen depend on closing the achievement gap between myself and those posting enthusiastic reviews on cooking websites with frequent resort to all caps. i have decided to throw myself on the collective mercy of crowd-sourcing. listen closely, dear readers, for i do not say this lightly: help me, omnomnom kenobi et al. you're my least embarrassing source of hope.
x-posted to
omnomnom
no subject
SkywalkerCookiebaker, what precisely do you do when you set about baking these cookies? If you lay it out step by step, perhaps we can identify the problem?Hand vs. Machine
My first guess is that you're doing all the mixing by hand. If the recipe companies are giving times for machine-mixing that would create a huge gap. And it would be just like them to pick the stat that looked best without specifying it depended on certain equipment.
Second possibility: I learned to ignore instructions to "drop on an ungreased baking sheet". My sheets always have to be greased or else I spend ages chiseling the burned crust off between sheetfuls. (My cookie sheets are bare metal, not non-stick.)