Accidental Dessert: What to do when your Chocolate Chip Cookies melt

Admittedly I’m not the cat’s meow of baking. Most of us stock pot jockeys run when we hear the word pastry or anything remotely connected to baking. At the end of the day however baking is really just a bigger part of gastronomy. It’s abiding to the laws of technique and slowing down to absorb and properly execute a recipe. In many cases savory foods can be fixed due to excessive spazzing out in the kitchen, baked items cannot.

Sifting, weighing, measuring, creaming, crumb, tempering, piping and “chilled” are all words that are often associated with baking. For me it’s kind of like filling out a tax form. Don’t want to do it, but can if I follow the rules step by painful step. Oh my!

So Molly walks in the door the other day and says, “I think I want to bake some cookies.” I’m like, “go for it!” I’d be in HOG heaven with a stack of warm moist cookies. Oh yea!

While I’m not a baker per say, I do know some tricks, and having worked in numerous restaurants I have cooked side by side with many pastry chefs. For production reasons they would make huge batches of dough and freeze for later use. It seemed that the melt ratio was pretty low.  Obviously this isn’t necessary for most pedestrian home cookies like chocolate chip, oat raisin etc. But if you haven’t properly sifted your flour, creamed your butter, beat your eggs or calibrated your oven then guess what? Your cookies might just flop and ooze all over the pan.

I seldom give unsolicited advice (like a two cent golf lesson from your buddy while on the links) regarding cooking but in this case I always suggest chilling your cookie batter/dough to help prevent the dreaded flat cookie cracker. Or worst yet, the greasy schmeared cookie. Eeks!

I started to chuckle right before she started preparing her cookie dough. I said “don’t give me the opportunity to tell you I told you so, maybe chill the dough?”. Molly basically gave me the hand, so I vacated the kitchen.

Any who- I’ll let Molly tell her story and how we came to discover the “accidental dessert”aka. what to do with flattened greasy cookies. Oh and before I go I need to tell you the reason for the second shot. I almost fell over when I saw it, but if you look closely you can see some happy spirit that came back as a cookie. Love the pecan coconut cru cut.

Okedoke—Molly, please tell us your enchanted story.

“I actually have baked numerous batches of cookies successfully, albeit most of them before I met Stephen. This batch was inspired by a visit from my brother. It was his birthday and he loves cookies so I thought they would make the perfect gift.  For the recipe, I opened Elizabeth Faulkner’s, Demolition Desserts cookbook since I hadn’t used her recipe before and I liked the idea of a play on a traditional favorite, specifically adding more salt than usual to a sweet dish.  The extra salt enhances the flavors.  And this was an aspect that everyone really liked about the cookies.

Right away I discovered we only had a 1/2 cup measuring cup, believe it or not, so in my version of the cookies the dry ingredients measurements are not exact. We also didn’t have dark brown sugar, but we did have molasses so I added a bit and this is the main reason the cookies melted.

I did notice that the dough was sticky which is why Stephen suggested that I cool it before baking. It crossed my mind to add flour, but I ultimately did not. Guess what happened? The cookies melted together, but they tasted really good.   And you can taste the salt, but hey are not too salty, rather just salty enough to notice.

The next day I was telling Julieann, an excellent baker friend, what I did. As soon as I told her about the molasses she nodded and said, “Yup, molasses is like liquid sugar. Just add flour next time”

What we ended up doing is making a cake out of the cookies. I lined a cake pan with parchment paper and put a layer of cookies in, then a layer of vanilla ice cream and so on and so forth until I ran out of cookies.

Though the cake isn’t the prettiest, it sure was good. In fact it was a hit!  Whether your cake drops or your cookies melt, have fun with your baking accidents they make great memories.

One more note, we topped the cake with toasted coconut and pecans, which I wouldn’t do next time, just because it made it messy; Stephen loved it.

Here is my version of Elizabeth Faulkner’s, “Chocolate Chip Cookies Straight up or with Nuts”
Remember that I only had a 1 cup measurement. What I am giving you here are the actual measurements from the original recipe.

Ingredients
8 tablespoons butter
¾ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar (the reason I added molasses – I had light brown sugar)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 ¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped the size of chocolate chips or bittersweet chocolate chips (about 1 ½ cups)
¾ cups chopped walnuts

Instructions
In a large mixing bowl using a wooden spoon, cream together the butter and sugars until smooth, but not over mixed. Add the egg, vanilla, and salt and stir until just combined. (this is when I added the molasses). Sift in the flour, baking soda and baking powder and stir until just combined. Add the chocolate chips and nuts and stir until evenly distributed throughout the dough. I’m just now noticing that in the original recipe, she says to put the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. I guess Stephen does know what he’s talking about!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop up 1-inch balls of the dough and set them 2 inches apart on the pans. Bake the cookies, rotating the pans after 7-9 minutes. (I didn’t do this…) If you like very soft cookies, bake them for 13 minutes. If you like a crisp cookie bake them for 17 minutes. Transfer to racks and let cool.

To assemble
Line a cake pan with parchment paper and put a layer of cookies in, then a layer of vanilla ice cream and so on and so forth until you run out of cookies.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 10:44 am and is filed under Food Experiences, Sweet Treats , Add new tag, baking mistake, chocolate chip cookies, citzen cake, elizabeth faulkner, liquid sugar, molasses, salt, walnuts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.