Abracadabra! Creating two cookies from one dough
Flour, sugar, and butter. These are truly magical ingredients. The types of cookies you can create from these ingredients are only limited by your own imagination.
“Well duh, Vanessa” you might be thinking. “Flour, sugar and butter are the building blocks for any cookie recipe.”
That is absolutely correct. But it is the manipulation of these ingredients that spell the difference between a thin, crisp cookie and a soft, chewy cookie (my personal favorite).
The recipe that I’m sharing with you is genius in its simplicity. Baking is an art, and this dough is the equivalent of a blank sheet of paper. You’ll get a different result, depending on what you add to it.
But for the purposes of this blog post, the cookies we’ll be creating are the classic crowd-pleasers: Oatmeal Raisin, and Chocolate Chip. And since soft, chewy cookies are my favorite, we’ll be making these - you guessed it - soft and chewy! Let’s roll!
Wet Ingredients
- 2 sticks of butter - melted
- 1/4 cup of white sugar
- 1 and 1/4 cups of brown sugar
- 1 egg and 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Dry Ingredients
- 2 and 1/4 cups of bread flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
A quick note on Bread Flour: you might be wondering why it’s so important to this recipe. One word - gluten. Bread flour contains more gluten than plain old AP flour. The gluten makes the dough stickier and thicker, which results in a thick, chewy cookie.
Back to the cookie dough - combine the wet ingredients and dry ingredients in separate bowls, and slowly pour the wet bowl into the dry bowl. You’ll notice that eventually, the dough will be the consistency of wet cement. But fear not! This just means that the Bread Flour is doing it’s job.
Once all of the ingredients are combined, the dough will be thick, and a medium brown color, thanks to the brown sugar. And that’s all she wrote! You now have your basic dough, and you can add any ingredient you’d like. Let’s continue by turning this dough into Chocolate Chip cookies, and Oatmeal Raisin cookies.
To turn this dough into Chocolate Chip Cookies, just add:
- 2 cups of chocolate chips (or whatever chips you prefer - white chocolate, perhaps)
- 1 cup of chopped nuts (optional)
To turn this dough into Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, just add:
- 2 cups of dry oatmeal
- 1 cup of raisins
- 1 and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- a dash of nutmeg
Drop by the spoonful onto a prepared cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees, for 9-11 minutes. When you take them out of the oven, they may not look “done,” but they are. Once they cool, they’ll retain their soft and chewy texture.
Coming Soon: Rhubarb - bitter vegetable or unsung hero of pies?
