Week 12: All the cookies, all the colors.
Gah! Where does the time go? Here it is already Monday, and I haven’t yet written about last week’s baking adventures. Meanwhile, we are moving right along, so I’d better get on top of it.
Last Monday seems like ages ago given all we did last week. No longer in Viennoiserie, we left behind lamination and forged into Pastry Fundamentals and various mixing methods and ingredients. Cookies were our medium.
On my table last week were Juan, Savion, and a new classmate from Bangalore, India named Sheila.
We started with chocolate chip cookies and learned how to correctly execute the basic creaming method. I kept thinking back to all the times I’d mixed batters and doughs at home. I’d skim over details like “scrape the bowl well” or “mix only until incorporation,” not realizing the consequences of overmixing or having butter collected in the bottom of the bowl. After we made the dough, we formed it into logs and rolled them in parchment for slicing and baking. While I was aware of this method, I’ve never made cookies like this before. I love the simplicity.
As with croissants, we conducted a test to see the effects of various ingredients on the finished product. The control cookie had granulated and brown sugars for the sweetener and unsalted butter for the fat. In the other batches, we substituted the sweeteners or the fat. Substitution were either 100% brown sugar, 100% granulated sugar, honey, Splenda, margarine, canola oil, banana, or applesauce. The results were interesting. The Splenda-sweetened cookies did not spread at all and they had a somewhat grainy texture. Cookies with bananas substituted for butter had a spongy mouthfeel. The consensus was that the all butter, 100% brown sugar cookies were the softest and tastiest.
Other cookies we made that day included ginger cookies, ginger snaps, peanut butter cookies, snickerdoodles, and oatmeal raisin — all with the same roll and slice method.
Tuesday we made pate sucree and learned the sanding mix method. We used the pate sucree as a base for lemon bars and a delicious cookie called Toscani — almond filling, a thin layer of apricot jam, and a delicious almond caramel topping. We also made Linzer torte, coconut macaroons, biscotti, “diamond” cookies sparkling with sanding sugar, rocher meringue, and the richest, fudgey, cakey brownies. Tuesday yielded some of my favorite items to date, with the biscotti and Toscani at the top of my list.
Wednesday, we were introduced to the world of macarons, the colorful little jewel-box meringue cookies. There were so many things I didn’t know about these cookies. For example, there are several types of meringue you can use to make macaron: French, Italian, and Swiss. The differences are in the proportion of sugar and egg whites. Also, I was not aware that almond meal is a major component of the meringue cookie shells. (Did you know that?) Finally, I instinctively knew the process for making macarons required a lot of skill and practice, but I did not know the process by which they came together. The critical factor for creating perfectly textured cookies is the act of folding the almond meal into the whipped egg whites and deflating the aerated eggs just the perfect amount. This process is called “macaronage.”
Most of Wednesday and Thursday were spent on macarons and, as a class, we ended up making about a dozen different flavors and colors with a variety of buttercream and ganache fillings.
Somewhere in here, things started to get fuzzy in my head: Was this the French method or the Italian method? What was the difference again? How did we do the buttercream? Wait, are these egg whites for buttercream or is it for meringue? When I went home on Saturday, I had to take some time to review the book and let things gel in my mind a bit. I feel like macarons are the baguettes and croissants of the pastry world. You could spend months or years working on your technique. Alas, we just had the two days.
Friday we moved on to muffins and quick breads and the blending method of mixing. We also did another test batch where we looked at the effects of chemical leaveners — baking soda and baking powder. (Our table made a batch of muffins that had neither. Not only were they not as voluminous, but they also lacked significant color.) Other items we baked that day: blueberry muffins, blueberry cream scones, butter scones, corn bread, bran muffins, chocolate muffins, pumpkin muffins with cream cheese filling, Madelines, financiers, banana bread, and pumpkin bread. Whew!
Of the items we baked on Friday, my favorites were the cream scones layered with blueberries, pumpkin muffins with cream cheese filling, financiers with brown butter, and beautiful, shell-shaped Madelines. It’s pretty cool how many of these batters or doughs can be made ahead and baked as needed. The other nice thing about pastry: I finally feel like I have formulas I could go home and bake tomorrow since there is no need for any special heavy equipment. (Though, I do need to buy myself some financier and Madeline forms before I go home.)
So that’s it. Pastry is underway and we are entering our last month of school. I spent another lovely weekend at home with Jeff, our last until the program is over. If last week is any indication, it will go by quickly. And there will be plenty of butter, sugar, and chocolate in the meantime.
