Help, please...cookie failure

G

Glennis

Well-known member
I've included the link to the blog and the recipe.

My cookies came out flat, they ran together, and they were too soft to lift with a spatula. The taste, however, is fabulous. Help! I see I'm not the only one who had the problem...Could one of you miraculous bakers give me a few hints? I'm thinking:

1) "Juice of half an orange" is a subjective quantity. My Valencia may have been BIG.

2) I used frozen cranberries, and chopped them while frozen, but I suppose that could have added some liquid? Somehow?

3) Might older flour be high in moisture and not take up the liquid in the batter as well?? I haven't noticed it being off in other recipes though...

4) What would be the impact of using (blew it here!!) baking POWDER rather than baking SODA here? The acid in the juice maybe would activate the soda -v- baking powder?

Thanks in advance! You folks have incredible knowledge and you're the first place I look for ANYTHING I want to cook!

Merry Christmas!!

http://goodthingscatered.blogspot.com/2008/12/cranberry-orange-cookies.html

 
Glennis, you're correct about the baking soda - it's a necessary ingredient to activate the acids,

and create more leavening power. Baking powder doesn't react with acids, so subbing isn't a great idea. Also, you would need about 4x the amount of powder to equal the soda - but even so, you may end up with a poor result.

And while the extra juice from a large orange, plus a little extra liquid from the frozen cranberries may have added to the problem, I'd say the baking powder was the main culprit.

 
Thanks so much! I read an article...

about the chemical properties of each (I just read it wrong), and realized that was the most likely candidate. The rest was insult added to injury. The good news is that the crumbling pieces still taste quite yummy, especially drizzled with dark chocolate. I'm convinced. Chocolate can fix almost anything!

 
Baking powder tends to make things rise up more and soda tends to spread . . .

I am thinking the moisture from both the orange and cranberries is the problem here. And the orange was said to be large.

BUT if the butter were too soft also, then the double whammy: to liquid of a dough from juice and berries AND too soft a dough from runny butter.

 
Glennis, I had all the ingredients so made these this morning. Mine too came

out flat!! But, I was able
to lift them off my silpat.
They are delicious, however!
Do you think she forgot an ingredient???
(I had only 1/8 cup of orange juice out of my
half orange)

 
No...you had the same result I did. That's why I posted!

I used frozen cranberries. That was blamed for part of the spread in the discussion thread on her site. I just don't see it making that much difference though. I'm thinking it's got to do with all the juice. 1 Tbsp. is probably more than enough for that much batter. By the way...my last few cookies did better...I baked them until just starting to brown on the edges.
Thanks for sharing my grief!

 
I still don't understand why yours and mine came out flat. The recipe calls

for juice from 1/2 orange and the people that wrote the recipe don't seem to have problems with flat cookies. I took mine out early too, just barely a brown ring around the bottom.
I'm baffled....

 
AHA!!! *sheepish admission within*

Does that say 1/2 CUP butter?? Holy measuring tools Batman...the woman used 1/2# of butter! Merely twice the quantity of butter should indeed make them spread like chestnut trees. Good grief Charlie Brown! I'll try them again this evening.

 
Conclusions...

1st correction - Reduce the butter to 1/2 CUP. That made a huge difference.
2nd correction - Use baking SODA.
3rd correction - Monitor quantity of juice in 1/2 orange...I squeezed in at least 2 Tbsp., maybe even 3...and added an extra 1/4 cup of flour to the dry ingredients. I still had as much juice remaining in the orange half as I'd squeezed out. I think that also made a big difference.

This time I made test cookies before making a whole pan... I baked 3 cookies for 14 minutes. They acted much more like cookies this time. I think I could have added another 1/4 cup flour easily. The extra flour also helped make up for the additional moisture in the frozen cranberries. The rest of the cookies behaved like I anticipated. The ones on Silpat came up easily, and the ones on parchment released almost as well. Success!!

 
I'm thinking oranges where they are must be on the small side...

I picked Valencias from my tree and they're really heavy. There was easily 1/2 cup juice in 1/2 an orange. I noticed in the discussion thread, a lot of people were experiencing flattened cookies too though. Even the 2nd batch didn't stand up like the ones in the picture. I end up wondering if she used both soda and baking powder...and neglected to note it.

 
Yes they are, but I have had the experience of putting baking powder into. . .

a recipe instead of baking soda and the cookies went up instead of out.

And, if you add both to a recipe, you tend towards a better rise overall (in say, like a coffee cake), given that you do have an acidic ingredient for the baking soda to react with.

Just my experience. . . and you'll know that I tempered my above and previous statements with the word "tend(s)." smileys/smile.gif

 
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