For the Love of Cookies, Please Read This By Tatsiana Paulouskaya Don't commit the crime of buying soulless grocery pastry at Christmas. Even if you aren't a gastronomy aficionado like myself, a solid argument for this is: awkwardly-shaped homemade goodies are always bound to make your grandparents smile. And let's agree - the title of a sugar dealer is the fame worth-fighting for. So hopefully, by now, you are all stocked up on butter, sugar and spices. Now heat your oven, blast some festive music or put on a winter sports program and get ready to follow the instructions.
Section 1 - A Bit of Cookie-ing Advice
2020 is terrible. Allow the pastry to be terrific.
1. Distinguish between basic dough types: cookie dough, cake dough and sweet bun/bread dough. Rule of thumb for that: cookies are just loads of sugar and butter; cakes need soda or baking powder; buns and bread need yeast. Each of these has special preparation peculiarities! 2. It's counterintuitive, but you should always add a pinch of salt to your sweet things. Salt is known to enhance sweetness by creating the needed contrast. 3. If a recipe calls for whisked eggs yolks, always take eggs out of the fridge in advance. Or at least put them in a bowl of warm water, if you're running late. Warmedup eggs can rise to twice the size of cold ones. Any cake would be much airier then. 3* Don't try to soften butter in a microwave, please... And be careful with melting it there, too. The OG French bakers would probably kill you for both. If you really need to melt butter in a microwave, do it at discontinuous 10-second intervals. Then the butter will stay creamy, not
turn into the oily liquid with some strange clumps... eh. 4. Let the cookie dough sit for 30 minutes between mixing and baking. What this does: flour and sugar hydrate, moisture becomes more evenly distributed, cookies will be crispy and chewy in places where they need to be, respectively. 5. Brown sugar and honey are superior to white sugar in terms of texturising cookies. But they are more expensive. Brown sugar is sweeter than white, so use less of it. 6. There is more to spices than cinnamon & vanilla: use ginger, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, black pepper! 7. When making cakes and cakey things, DO NOT overmix on autopilot. I know it's fun to be bobbing the glistening batter around, but you should know: after you add flour, there is a big no-no as to unnecessary mixing. Mixing forms gluten, which is good for yeast-based things (and we are not talking Karens here), but it makes cakes stale.
Now you're all set for Section 2 - The Triad of Easy Pastry Recipes
I'm gonna share with you three of my tried-and-tasted recipes for every type of dough! Cookie, cake and yeast-based. All can be eaten under the mistletoe. Call me to share how it turned out, will you! Note: English-speaking internet usually measures stuff in cups, and I find this cool - no annoying kitchen scales needed. I use a 200 or 250 ml cup for measuring dry and liquid ingredients.
