The Science Behind Dessert

My favorite part of a four course meal is the dessert. Depending on whose cooking, ever dessert can taste a little different. What component of dessert makes it fluffy, chewy, or crumby? These characteristics are what I want to explore today in the baking of cookies. What makes cookies come out the way they do?

 

Baking of a Cookie

• Conventional ovens allow for evenly baked cookies due to the fans within the oven that circulate the air which then allows the cookies to cook with an even brown color
• Avoid dark baking sheets, which cause more browning than lighter ones, and thin, flimsy cookie sheets
• Insulated sheets help prevent bottom browning
• Heavy sheets can take longer to warm-up and in turn can cause the bottom of the cookie ti darken faster

Chewy Sugar Cookies		Crunchy Sugar Cookies

Shortening vs. Butter

• Shortening is a great emulsifier that helps keep dough aerated
• Shortening has a higher boiling point than butter so it decreases the spreading of the dough during cooking
• Butter taste better than shortening 
• Best to just combine a little shortening with butter

Chewy vs. Crisp

• Chewy cookies contain more moisture than crisp cookies
• Soft cookies = less time baked
• Hard cookies = more time baked
• For soft cookies pull them out of the oven while they are still moist because they will continue to bake on the warm sheet
• Add a tablespoon or so of honey, corn syrup, or molasses to your recipe to keep the cookies from drying out longer because the fructose in these attract moisture

All in all, a great cookie is composed of a shortening/butter mix, a little honey, and baked for a short period of time on an insulated cookie sheet.