For general discussion about the league, league games, advice, questions, concerns, favorite cookie recipes, whatever….
My Favorite Cookie Recipe,
_In truth, a chemist’s version of a recipe would specify ingredients by weight, not volume, unless they were liquid. Specifications would not be in cubic centimeters but in milliliters or deciliters.
General-purpose flour is only 11% gluten; cake flour is about 8% gluten and hard-wheat bread flour is 15% gluten. US all-purpose flour has a density of 0.42, and UK all-purpose flour has a density of 0.42. Butter has a density of 0.97. Granulated sugar is 0.81, and brown sugar is 0.85. Chocolate chips have a density of 0.71.
Baking powder is baking soda [sodium carbonate] with a dry acid such as calcium phosphate (single-acting powder) and (for double-acting baking powder) some alum (sodium aluminum sulfate).
Brown sugar is not unrefined sugar. It is refined sugar with molasses added to it. Raw sugar is more crystalline and smells more strongly of molasses. Molasses is the byproduct of refining sugar; it is added back in to make brown sugar.
Butter is not hydrogenated, The word “tallow” normally means rendered fat, which butter is not.
Vanilla extract is a solution of vanilla-bean esters in ethyl alcohol. That’s esters, not ethers. Synthetic “vanillin” is indeed a dimethyl ether, but it is properly called 3,4-DIMETHOXYBENZALDEHYDE. I would not make cookies with synthetic vanilla flavoring.
Peanuts are the only nut that is a legume. Chocolate chip cookies are made with walnuts or pecans, never peanuts.
It is customary to remove the shells from eggs used in baking, so the calcium-carbonate enscapsulation is a packaging trick not part of the recipe.
Theobroma cacao is the botanical name for the cocoa plant. The harvested and processed extract of it that is called “chocolate chips” is a mixture of dried cocoa powder, cocoa butter, and refined sugar. Cookies made with whole Theobroma plants have a woody texture and are undigestible.
The fabled recipe’s ingredient list should go like this:
225 gm dried powdered bleached sifted Triticum germ
5 gm NaHCO3 (Sodium Bicarbonate)
1 gm NaAlSO3 (Sodium Aluminum Sulfate)
1 gm KC4H5O6 (potassium hydrogen tartrate)
7 gm NaCl (Sodium Chloride) (extra to compensate for baking soda subst)
225 gm Lipid extracted from Bos taurus lactation.
280 gm Crystalline C12H22O11 (sucrose)
25 ml Sucrose refinement byproduct, high viscosity
5 ml 3,4-DIMETHOXYBENZALDEHYDE
200 gm chopped germ of Juglans regia
2 ova from Gallus domesticus
350 gm domestic food product with UPC 061823111908 (the chocolate chips)
From: Brian Reid
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2
Subject: Re: Geek Cookie Recipe_
