Cookie Fail!

[ase]

My cookies came out flat again. I've changed half the ingredients, bought new baking trays, opened The Joy of Cooking to Old Reliable (oatmeal cookies), and do I have cookies? No: I have a puddle of flat mush on parchment paper.

The major differences I can think of are
1.) letting the butter sit until it reaches room temp
2.) used warm cookie sheets
3.) West coast butter?
4.) AA brown eggs?
5.) Quick oats instead of standard rolled
6.) The oven is running hot/cold

The eggs are probably a red herring. West coast butter ought to be functionally identical to east coast butter. The oven thermometer suggests the bottom rack runs cool; that's why I rotate top and bottom pans about halfway through the suggested baking time. The sheets could be an issue; unlikely to be wildly significant. The oats could be a contributing factor, but the puddle-cookie problem predates the oats. Next time I make cookies, I'm taking the butter straight from the fridge to the mixing bowl. (Or maybe knocking off a tablespoon.)

Oatmeal cookies (from The Joy of Cooking, 1974 edition)
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsbp (soy) milk
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup quick oats (should be rolled)

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugar. Add and mix egg, vanilla and soy milk. Add and mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add and mix oats. Drop onto (parchment covered) baking sheets, cook 10 - 12 min (or so), rotating racks once. Transfer to cooling racks.

Roommate Number Three tried to modify his fried rice approach last night and sounded about this irate about how his experiment came out. Is it time to exorcise the oven unit? Or should we break into the liquor cabinet again? Studies suggest this is one time a binary construction is a good idea: mixing booze, ovens and exorcism just doesn't end well.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Tired baking powder? Altitude differences?

[jd]

I thought altitude might be a factor as well, but I looked it up and they're only about 200ft up.

[ase]

Altitude doesn't kick in until a much bigger difference. I'd invoke relative humidity first.

[jd]

Yeah. Isn't it something like a thousand feet? We don't even have that height in the highest part of the City.

here via network

[quillori]

I always feel sort of weird turning up in other people's journals found via network. On the other hand, apparently I find discussing food in general and baking in particular completely irresistable.

Possible fix 1: The dough needs to set in shape before it has a chance to spread, so after you've mixed and shaped the dough, put it in the fridge for a while, or even the freezer for 5 or 10 minutes. That way the outside should bake to the point of holding its shape before the inside melts enough to spread.

Possible fix 2: The same problem could also be fixed by baking at a higher temperature for the first 5 minutes or so, so the cookies set faster.

Possible fix 3: The only other thing I can think of is are you using the same flour? Low protein (ie bleached) flour works better for cookies, because it doesn't tie up as much of the liquid that should be turning into steam and raising the cookie.

Of course, none of this answers why there's a problem, unless the entire oven is running cool or you're using different flour. (It could be the entire oven - at one point I had an oven with a fairly useless thermostat and ended up with three different oven thermometers, all reputable brands, which never once agreed with each other, so they're clearly not entirely reliable.)

Re: here via network

[ase]

I'd used all my bleached flour, and tried the unbleached with this batch. That might be a contributing factor. But that doesn't explain previous problems, which worries me.

[phoenixsong]

If the bottom rack runs cool, what if you cook just one sheet on the top rack and don't rotate?

I second the cook at higher temp suggestion as well, again citing the apparent oven temp discrepancy. Maybe 375F will do the trick?

(I would not call myself a "foodie", but I've got a half-decent working knowledge of how to cook in general.)

[ase]

If the bottom rack runs cool, what if you cook just one sheet on the top rack and don't rotate?

Efficiency. Also, the two sheets of cookies looked very similar when I switched them, so I don't think the temperature gradient is a major factor in this case.