Question about baking chocolate chip cookies

E

evan

Well-known member
I'm making chocoate chip cookies tonight.

I've made cookies before, but they always come out hard and dry.

I know I bake them for too long, but HOW do I know what's just enough? I guess I'm afraid of under-baking them.

And - what's the worst thing that can happen if I under bake them? Food poisoning??

TIA

 
Eva, I did that too when I first started baking cookies

and it is understandable. I finally learned that you just have to go on faith and take them out before they "look" done. If you're in a big batch of baking, you can practice this as you're taking them out. Inspect them as you take them out then after they cool. Too done? Take the next batch out earlier.

If you get some that just aren't done, you can always rebake. But I did learn that, for me, the perfect cookie comes out looking very underdone.

A good test would be to make the exact size specified in the recipe, calibrate your oven to make sure it is at the correct temperature, and bake for the exact number of minutes specified. Take the baking pan out regardless of whether you think they aren't done enough and see how they turn out. I did that and that's how I learned that taking them out before they looked completely baked was the key.

Good luck.

 
By a fluke, I ended up with exact duplicates of Chips Ahoy "Soft Batch" cookies

Honestly, you could have lifted them off the Silpat and snuck (sneaked? snucked?)...replaced them in the packaging and no one would know. Other than the elusive taste of 16 missing chemical additives.

Basically, I wanted to double a batch of CC cookies and found out I only had 1/2 stick of butter left (Item 43 on the Top 100 Signs That Amageddon is Coming ). But I DID have a pint of organic heavy cream and we all know from previous tests (ie. screw-ups) that overwhipped cream turns into--butter!

That was Change #1. Screw Up #2 was adding 1 tsp of baking soda AND 1 tsp baking powder. (This was my fourth week on pain-killer drugs...now you can see why I've stopped cooking. Oh, and I mailed out a $3,200.00 check to the wrong address.)

Finally, I used 2:1 ratio brown sugar to white sugar, rather than 1:1.

Raw dough tasted of the rising agents, but the baked goods didn't.

Scoped out with a 1" diameter scoper onto silpats and ended up with a grocery store clone.

 
i always set the timer for a few min less than specified, then keep a close eye. s'pose it's

possible to get food poisoning from an underbaked cookie that contains eggs, but i've never heard of it. in fact, i've eaten enough raw cookie dough in my life that i should probably have been posioned at some point, but have never had a problem. i've heard as long as your eggs are 'healthy' that salmonella is very rare.

 
soft cookies

1) shortening will give higher softer cookies because is melts at higher temp that butter

2) increasing ratio of brown sugar to white because of molasses in brown sugar

3) replacing whole eggs with 2 egg yolks (egg whites will dry out cookies)

Also splenda will dry out cookies cause while it takes like sugar it does not act like sugar, if using splenda have to treat it as a dry ingredient and not a wet (see splenda's website for more info

i also agree, like scrambled eggs, cookies that look done are too done.

if your worried about under cooking look for pasteurized eggs in grocery or you can use egg substitute which is also pasteurized.

 
They will look 'almost' done, but still pretty soft. Leave them on the sheet

for a few minutes before trying to move them. There is no downside - they taste good even underbaked smileys/smile.gif

 
My MIL peeks under the cookie by lifting an edge with a spatula

Different kind of cookie, but I learned that trick from her. They look totally undone on top, but slightly brown on the bottom. This won't work with a dark (e.g. nonstick coating) pan.

 
Marilyn, that is a perfect example of that mistakes in the kitchen

can come out tasting wonderful!

Is your recipe in the archives, btw?

I hope you got your money back too! You can bake alot of cookies for those bucks, I mean smileys/smile.gif

 
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