This “how-to” is all about cookies and biscuits: soft and gooey ones as well as utterly crisp and snappy numbers; post any questions you have below and I’ll try to help, or if you have a better way, let us know. Look for this ginger macadamia biscuits recipe, so good I made it three more times in the fortnight after it was rushed to the Guardian. Each time the bake urge struck, I’d be doing something mundane like cleaning the book shelves or weeding the herb garden and I’d start to have those sweet crispy thoughts; next thing, like a hard core cookieholic, I’d find myself in the kitchen whipping the butter and sugar.
The terms cookie and biscuit are interchangeable today. The OED has a reference from about 1730 but in Britain we appear to stop using the word cookie in the early 1900s. It then re-entered our vocabulary through American baking, attached to biscuit recipes with previously unheard of richness and delicacy. Dutch settlers took the word “koekje” across to America, but back it came redefined with a generous and indulgent meaning. If a cookie is music then American taught us how to sing and dance it exuberantly. Sure, a well-made butter shortbread or a ginger parkin has a beautiful simplicity but sometimes you want to shake it up. That’s the time to bake a cookie.
I know it can seem like a bit of a bother but nothing you can buy, that’s right, nothing, compares to a homemade cookie or biscuit. There are steps you can take to make life easier, ways to have a batch in the fridge and freezer, tricks for making them softer or crisper. Mixtures can use up leftover dried fruit, a spare egg yolk or white, other fats instead of butter and other flours too.
That’s fine for you but I probably only have time twice a year to bake cookies.
Biscuit and cookie recipes can be broken into stages that can be carried out over days or weeks if you need to. The first stage is the measuring and mixing. This can all be done in one bowl and finished in about 10 minutes. You don’t need to worry about endlessly mixing till your arm aches. Just beat the butter and sugar lightly, beat in the egg (if the recipe has one), stir in the flour and other bits and that’s it. Don’t even sift the flour. At this point you can bake them immediately, fridge or freeze the mixture. Try doing that with a sponge cake. So with a little planning you could bake more often.
But what if I want a home-baked cookie now, rather than in an hour when I’ve left the house or gone to bed?
This is where the fridge or freezer is best. Forget about those tubs of ready-made cookie dough at the supermarket. Just make double then store half in the fridge in a covered container where it will keep happily for a few weeks if your fridge is cold (4C), or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Probably longer but hey, don’t really want to eat stale cookie dough. Though I tasted it once in a tub of ice-cream. Shortbread is best in a block so you can cut fingers from it. Fridge-cold or frozen, I bake straight away in a preheated oven on a low temperature. No need to defrost, but add 5 minutes more to the baking time.
Freezing needs a little extra planning, working out what shape you want to bake them in. I like to roll the dough into balls, lay a sheet of non-stick baking paper on a tray that will fit in the freezer, then sit the pieces quite close to each but not quite touching. Freeze the tray then when the pieces are rock-hard move them into a container or zip-lock bag.
Recipes call for softened butter? You must live in an alternate cake-centric universe where butter lives on the table, always soft and never rancid.
I keep mine in the fridge too. The trick is to cut it into small 2cm cubes, place them in a saucepan (or in a bowl in the microwave) and heat gently until about a quarter is barely melted and the rest solid. Pour this into the mixing bowl, leave for 5 minutes so the remaining cubes of butter soften slightly, add the sugar then beat away. Don’t fear a little melted butter as it will emulsify with the eggs.
My cookies end up too crisp, but my shortbread is too soft. What gives?
There are three aspects to this. The first and main one is the baking time. Bake virtually all cookies and biscuits at a low oven temperature, 170°C/fan 150°C/335°F/gas 3 as this will allow you to add a few minutes more or less to the suggested baking time to suit. For soft-crust chewy cookies, very slightly underbake them and allow for the heat to continue cooking them for a few minutes after the tray is removed from the oven. For crisper shortbread, reduce the oven heat further to a very low 140°C/fan 120°C/285°F/gas 1 and leave them for 5 – 10 minutes longer than the recipe suggests. Some people just switch the oven off and leave the tray inside for 10 minutes. If your shortbread goes too dark at this temperature then your oven is running hotter than what it reads on the dial.
The second aspect is the ingredients used. Soft brown sugar, in addition to a small amount of golden syrup or black treacle/molasses, corn syrup or honey, will help stop the sugar crystallising when it bakes and keep your cookies soft. Equally, adding brown sugar or syrups to shortbread will turn them softer. Rolled oats and oat flour give a soft chew to cookies, as does a little rye or wholemeal flour. The American wünderchef Shirley O. Corriher told me that if you activate the gluten in white wheat flour by rubbing a few tablespoons of water through it first, then leave it for 10 minutes before beating it with the other ingredients, the resulting cookies are much chewier.
The other thing to remember is the cookie jar or biscuit tin, and how you store them. Covering the cookies after baking with a light clean tea towel will soften them if you fear you’ve over baked them, and placing a quarter of an apple in the tin will help to keep them soft. For shortbread, brandy snaps and other biscuits and crackers you want to keep crisp, the trick is to put a thin (1cm) layer of rock salt in the bottom of the tin with layers of baking paper above and beneath it. Store your biscuits on top of this and keep the tin sealed, and the salt acts as a slight desiccant and help to draw out any moisture in the air.
