Cookie Making Made Easy

Baking is as important as making, if perfect small cakes are desired. Ovens differ. Use the various temperatures given in the recipes as a guide. But perfect your own baking temperatures, according to the best results obtained from your oven. In using an electric oven, after the oven registers the correct heat, turn the top element off. Bake with the top element turned off. Use block tin baking sheets for the best results. The pans should not touch the walls of the oven. Most cookies burn easily. Especially is this true of cookies made of molasses and cookies made with no milk. Cookies must be watched constantly. Turn the pans frequently, while baking, to insure even browning. If you are not experienced do not start baking until all the cookies are on the baking sheets. Grease the pans with butter. This gives the good buttery taste that is necessary for choice cookies. Place the cookies on the pans, allowing space for them to spread. After each pan of cookies is baked wipe off the baking sheet with a piece of heavy brown paper, slightly greased. Washing the pans between bakings has a tendency to cause cakes to stick. This is particularly true of rolled cookies. Never put a cookie on a hot pan. Never pile the cookies on top of each other to cool. Cool on sheets of brown paper.

The American method of baking is quick baking. The cookies are not allowed to dry out. For quick baking put the cookies into a 450° F. oven and reduce the temperature as needed. If hard cookies are desired, after the cookies are baked the temperature is reduced to 250° F. and the cakes are allowed to stay in the oven to dry out. The Northern European method of baking is slow baking. This makes a crisper harder cookie. The temperatures should be 350° F. to 275° F. Measure accurately. Use standard cup and spoon measures. Always measure flour before sifting unless the recipe says: measure after sifting. The amount varies several tablespoonfuls before and after sifting. Measuring the fat is important for the best results. Cutters are on the market to cut pound cakes of butter or lard into cupfuls or portions of cupfuls. These are convenient as a labor saver, as well as a means of accurate measurement. Pastry blenders are also on the market. These are particularly useful in blending butter into flour and sugar, in cookie making. The use of the blender prevents the fat from becoming oily, as it frequently does when the blending is done with the hands. A large rubber plate scraper, with flexible points, is an indispensable kitchen implement in cookie making. Use the scraper for removing mixed ingredients from bowls. It prevents waste and insures accuracy. An approximate estimate of the number of cookies a recipe makes is arrived at by the amount of flour used. For example, Virginia Cookies, calling for one and one-half cups of flour makes about thirty cakes the size of a twenty-five cent piece.

Here are two cookie recipes for you to try.

GINGERBREAD CAKE

Sift together
10 cups flour
2 tbsp. Ginger
1 nutmeg grated
1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup cream

Blend the butter into the flour. Heat the molasses, sugar and cream together. Add the hot liquid to the flour. Knead to a smooth stiff dough. Roll thin and cut into large round cakes. Bake at 400° F. for about eight minutes.

SHREWSBURY CAKE

This cookie recipe came to America with our first grandmothers, back in the days when English gentlemen were sent to colonial Virginia to sit in the House of Burgesses. One day, if luck smiles upon you, you will drop into a mountain cabin in North Carolina and a venerable grandmother will serve you a cup of tea poured from an ancient silver pot. Then she will bring out little tea biscuits, which she still calls Shrewsbury cakes, and which she still makes by her famous old recipe.

Sift together
8 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tbs coriander seed powder

1/2 cup of milk
11/2cups butter melted
6 eggs unbeaten

Add the butter, milk and eggs to the flour. Mix well and knead to a smooth dough. Roll very thin, cut into small shapes and bake at 400° F. until light brown.

For cookie recipes from around the world, go to http://FoodAndRecipes.Dapatlah.com

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