Ginger Oatmeal Cookies
These were an experiment in textures. I wanted to make a cookie that was crisp, but not too crunchy. I like a chewy cookie, but not a cakey texture. The First Reader likes a cookie with a bit of bite to it. And the ginger? Well, I love ginger, and on a cold day a warm spice is very nice. I made these with chocolate chips, mainly because the Little Man had left an open bag tucked in the baking cupboard and I wanted to use them up. They are purely optional and after having made up the cookies, I'd say you could leave them out and get more of the spice - but they do complement the ginger very well.
Also, I was weighing out the ingredients, rather than physically measuring. What can I say? I was missing my lab time. I haven't - yet - worked on converting recipes to formulas, but I really should. It would be a great exercise for me, and the Little Man, to work up some chemistry for the cookbook.
I was using two scales - I have one for spices that allows smaller mass to be accurately measured - and being a bad scientist weighing in imperial and metric. I converted it for you, though!
Ginger Oatmeal Cookies
Preheat oven to 350F
113 g butter
113 g lard
100 g dark corn syrup
85 g granulated sugar
0.7 g nutmeg
0.05 g ground cloves
2 g cinnamon
2.25 g ground ginger
5 g baking powder
1.5 g baking soda
0.15 g ground cardamom
2 eggs (115 g with shell)
170 g Old Fashioned Oats
170 g pastry flour
4 g salt
200 g semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)
In a stand mixer with batter blade attachment, beat the butter, lard, and all spices until creamy. Add in the dark corn syrup and sugar, while continuing to beat until fluffy. Add in the eggs one at a time, then the baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Slow the beating and slowly add in the oats. When well incorporated, add in the flour in three portions, allowing it to mix well after each addition. Stop the mixer. Fold in the chocolate chips.
Cookies fresh out of the oven, they will continue to bake on the hot pan and as you can see, the Maillard reaction will progress from here.
I use airbake pans, with a silicone mat, for baking cookies. You'll want to adjust the cooking temps and times according to your pans and oven - home ovens are rarely accurate, so this make take some time and experience to get comfortable with, but it's a good process to go through. If you are using a dark pan, keep your temperature a bit lower (say 325) while a shiny silvery pan (like my airbakes) is fine at the recommended temperature. For cookies, this is vital as the cook times for proper consistency vary and it's very easy to overbake. Also, you will want to remove the cookies and allow to stand on the pan for 2-3 minutes before removing to a cooling rack, to allow them to finish baking through, without overbaking. For my oven and set-up, I bake at 10-11 minutes, and remove when the edges have just gotten a little golden but the tops are pale.
My kitchen lab notebook. It's a real notebook from a real lab, discarded as the transition to digital made it obsolete. I rescued it.
This recipe makes 2 1/2 dozen cookies, dropped by tablespoonfuls onto the sheet. They will spread, so don't put them closer than an inch and a half (for me, this is almost a thumb length) to one another. And yes, I know how long my thumbs are, I've measured. Makes a handy ruler when I don't want to have an actual ruler!
Consistency of the fats and spices, and sugars. Quite fluffy due to the water in the corn syrup. Fatting the spices like this allows the volatile molecules of their flavor to be drawn out fully prior to baking.
Consistency of the prepared dough. For drop cookies like these, I do not refrigerate. The longer the cookie dough sits, the more the gluten activates, and the tougher your end result may be, even though you really should use pastry flour for a nice delicate crunch to these.