As part of our Holiday Baking series of blog posts, today the focus will be on ways to develop more flavor notes in cookies to increase your sensory enjoyment of them.
A variation of a sugar cookie that so many people enjoy is some version of a chocolate chip cookie. Everyone has their favorite variation of the classic recipe, however, not everyone may be making the dough 1-2 days ahead of time before baking it off.
Why make and refrigerate dough 1-2 days in advance then of when you plan to bake the cookies? Read on to find out the answer!
Holiday Baking – Cookies and Their Ingredients Part 3 Developing Flavor
Official credit for the first chocolate chip cookies goes to Ruth Graves Wakefield of Whitman, Massachusetts, owner of the Toll House Inn, who served those cookies to her guests by the 1930’s. Of course, the flour from that era no longer exists, but we talked about differences in flours back on 28Nov2011 in another blog post.
Decades later, Mrs. Fields built a cookie business from the ground up on the shoulders of her recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
Because of her unparalleled success, many have tried to “clone” the recipe for the cookies sold in stores named after that chocolate chip cookie business franchiser. In 2010, the latest well-known clone was promoted by Todd Wilbur via his television show “Top Secret Recipes” as he wanted to improve on the 1986 first clone attempt he made to duplicate the famous Mrs. Fields® chocolate chip cookie.
You can read through that chocolate chip 2010 “cookie clone” recipe and see what you think of it. The older chocolate chip 1986 “cookie clone” recipe is also still available as well.
What I found curious is that Todd Wilbur didn’t indicate an awareness of one way to better develop the flavor in the chocolate chip cookie dough before shaping it and briefly freezing the dough. He scooped* the dough and placed it on cookie sheets which he then popped into the freezer for 30-40 minutes prior to baking the cookies off (he was making rather large diameter cookies so they needed a bit more time in the freezer than say smaller diameter cookies would).
His approach of baking the cookies at a lower temperature for a longer period of time supposedly comes from “top secret” information he gleaned from viewing coverage of an actual Mrs. Fields cookie store baking area. Commercial ovens can be quite different than home model ovens, although some high end ovens today might have features found in the commercial sector such as steam options, etc., most of us will never get to use an oven like that.
Rather than focusing on duplicating what is produced in a commercial cookie-only focused bakery, I thought it would be more practical to look at simpler approaches anyone could use at home to make their favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe taste better no matter what oven they use to bake it off in.
The key to making even yummier chocolate chip cookies at home from scratch is simply using your refrigerator!
My adult daughter discovered this first hand for herself when making chocolate chip cookies for her husband, who looks forward to her relaxing by baking for family and friends. He told me he had never tasted chocolate chip cookies that were “so good” as he put it until he tasted her’s.
It turns out Ruth Graves Wakefield also actually had some inkling of the value of refrigerating sugar cookie dough, as in her “Toll House Cook Book” she reportedly mentioned something about this refrigeration step that is NOT mentioned on the back of those Nestlé “Toll House” chocolate morsels packages consumers have been buying with a version of her original chocolate chip cookie recipe on them since 1939. “At Toll House, we chill this dough overnight” is reportedly written in that 1953 book published by Little, Brown.
If you allow the cookie dough to spend at least 24 hours and preferably 36 – 48 hours in the refrigerator before baking it off, you will be rewarded with vastly improved sensory qualities in the finished chocolate chip cookie baked product. Shirley Corriher, author of Bakewise, is known for making the public aware of that little tidbit of science know-how (showing how indeed, science contributes to the art of baking).
You will find that the resulting chocolate chip cookie browns better and it will also have more noticeable toffee flavor notes and delightful caramelization.
For the best chocolate flavor, since the original “Toll House” chocolate chip cookie recipe had bits or chips of an actual chocolate bar in them, look for chocolate bits, be they morsels or otherwise shaped chips, that contain at least 60% cacao for a deeper, richer chocolaty flavor.
Refrigeration time will set the stage for maximum cookie flavor development, especially when there is brown sugar present**.
Time under refrigeration allows that moisture to more evenly distribute throughout the cookie dough. Both protein and starch molecules want to soak up that moisture, so allowing time for that to happen will allow the cookie to develop the best flavor, while also making the dough more uniform throughout. Enzymes will then have time to do a little work to break down the larger starch molecules a bit into disaccharides or larger sugars, and monosaccharides or smaller sugars like glucose (think corn syrup), which leads to lovely browning in cookies and some toffee notes.
Sugar also caramelizes in baking, which enriches flavors and provides for that caramelization quality most of us love.
Commercial bakers know that substituting as little as a tablespoon of corn syrup for white sugar in a home quantity recipe (which commercially is scaled up) can make cookies much browner, because corn syrup browns at a lower temperature than sugar. Some sugars, like honey and brown sugar, absorb moisture from the atmosphere, which means that things baked with them will stay soft and moist longer.
If the cookie dough is allowed to thoroughly chill so that the saturated fat in the cookie is colder and harder, then when the cookie bakes the outside will be crispier, while the inside remains softer.
One thing Todd Wilbur realized is true: vanilla extract starts baking off at around 280°F. Adding more vanilla extract to many chocolate chip cookie recipes (if they only call for 1 tsp vanilla extract per 2+ cups of flour) might be a good place to start experimenting with such a recipe. Doubling or tripling that vanilla extract contribution, depending upon the potency of the vanilla extract being used, could well improve the sensory perception of the finished baked product.
All of which proves that indeed, science, used in the right ways, can help us make our food more delicious!
We’d like to encourage you to bake with a little food science know-how this Holiday season.
*Using any type of scoop to measure out the cookies will increase their uniformity in baking, as will flattening the cookies down slightly before baking them.
**Another option would be to use a chamber quality vacuum sealer (the type used for sous vide) almost immediately after mixing the dough and vacuum sealing it, but most people don’t have that specialty product access. You could try using a home model vacuum sealer, although results cannot be guaranteed.