How To: Bake Cookies

When I lived in Oregon, I gained a reputation among hikers because I always brought cookies.  Since many central Oregon hikes include a mountain, and the cookies were usually extracted from my pack at the geographical high point, we called them summit cookies.  It didn't matter what kind they were; we always called them summit cookies.  I came to believe that I was invited on most of those hikes because people assumed my presence included cookies.  They did nothing to dissuade me from this belief.

Soft Molasses Cookies with vanilla frosting

The first time I ever made cookies was under my mom's watchful eye.  The recipe came from a magazine I loved called Cricket.  I think they were called Stress Cookies, and drew their name from the procedure of mixing all ingredients directly by hand, squishing your fingers through it and punching it into the bowl.  I don't remember anything else about them.

Over a decade later, when I was living at home after college and Dad and I went about the countryside repairing people's porches and plumbing, he bought me my current favorite cookie compendium, and I started making cookies again.  After a couple batches, I got pretty good at it, and soon started working my way through the book and trying recipes from other sources.

Pear-Ginger Cookies with lemon frosting.  One of my favorites!

Here are some general guidelines that will help with almost any drop cookies recipe:

• The first step is usually "cream butter and sugars," or maybe they'll say shortening instead of butter, or maybe there's some cream cheese or sour cream involved, or maybe it just says to blend them.  The exact words don't matter.  The texture does.  When a recipe says to "cream" something, they want a smooth, even consistency.  With butter and sugar, this starts with softened butter.  If you forgot to get the butter out of the fridge hours before you start, just put it in a glass bowl and pop it in the microwave for a few seconds.  You will quickly get an idea of the perfect time in your microwave.  (Mine takes about 22 seconds to soften two sticks of butter)  When is it soft enough?  When you can easily mash it with the back of a wooden mixing spoon.  Add your sugar, and use the back of the wooden mixing spoon (see also: Nature's Finest Mixing Device) to mash them together.  At first, you will get a lot of streaky mess, more obviously if you're using brown sugar, but as you continue to stir and mash, it will become homogeneous.  Then you're ready for eggs and vanilla.
• Maybe.  Not all recipes call for those two, but in my mind, we're making chocolate chip cookies, and almost all of the recipes I've used employ at least one, and often both.  Gwen Steege's book has some advice on eggs, but I think she's a little too careful in this respect.  As long as your eggs are safe to use and you don't get any shell in the cookie dough, you're ok.  Usually vanilla is added at about the same time.  I haven't measured vanilla in five or six years.  Eyeballing it is close enough, but you may want to practice that if you're not the vanilla fan that I am.  Mix in the eggs and vanilla until it's homogeneous again; in fact, with every step except the addition of chunky things like chocolate chips and nuts, mix until homogeneous.  (chunky things don't homogenize, or they wouldn't be chunks, right?)

Mocha Dreams, a rare eggless cookie.

• Most recipes I've found advise sifting together dry ingredients like flour, salt, and baking soda in a separate bowl, then adding them to the creamed ingredients and egg.  I never do that.  I am lazy, I don't own a sifter, and I see no need to get another mixing bowl dirty (it's just something else to wash).  However, some recipes advise adding these dry ingredients gradually, and I will do that.  I'll drop in the first cup of flour with the salt and baking soda (also baking powder, if that's an ingredient), stir it smooth, then add the rest in roughly similar amounts, stirring after each addition.
• You want to buy a Cuisinart, go ahead.  I have a tiny apartment kitchen, so I use a wooden spoon that might have cost $6.  It's great.  I can stir anything with it, it has a stout handle so I never worry about breaking it off in some thick bread dough, and it fits in the drawer beside the silverware.  Plus, after years of cookie and bagel baking, I'm developing pretty ridiculous forearm strength.
• Chips and nuts go in last.  Stir until evenly distributed.

Toffee Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

• Some recipes call for greasing baking sheets, but I don't like the spray cans of non-stick coating, and my alternative is to rub butter or Crisco on the sheets with my fingertips, which is a TERRIBLE IDEA if they've just been in the oven with the previous dozen cookies.  Use parchment paper instead. You can use the same sheet for an entire batch of cookies, scooping them off easily to cool on waxed paper on a wire rack or kitchen counter.  Not all recipes require this; use that first sheet of cookies to decide.  If they stick, slap on some parchment paper.  Just be careful to grip the paper and the baking sheet at the same time, because nothing holds the paper in place, and if it slides off, you've just lost a dozen cookies to the floor monster.
• When are cookies done baking?  Depends on the recipe.  My baking times and my cookbook almost never agree.  For lighter cookies, look for a pleasant golden color to develop.  With darker cookies, you may have to poke them gently.  They shouldn't yield too easily, but if they're rock hard, it usually means that you left them in too long, and smoke has filled your kitchen.  Keep an eye on them, and try the same recipe a couple times until you're really happy with the results.  Then leave yourself notes in the cookbook.

Cheesy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies with pecans

• There is one final important rule to cookie baking: feel free to experiment, innovate, substitute, and make mistakes.  Chocolate chip cookies were invented by accident (there are different versions of the story, but they both involve accidents, so the lesson is sound), and they seem to be a prevailing favorite.  Mistakes can be delicious.  Roll with it.  I ran short of brown sugar once and substituted some honey to make up the difference, and the results were great.  I just wish I remembered the rest of the recipe.