Recipe for Baking Cookies - Information

Instructions: Q. What is the secret to thick, cake-like, soft cookies, a la Mrs. Field?

Mine seem to spread in the oven. Is it the flour? eggs? shortening (butter vs.

margarine vs. Crisco)? Please help me feed my fussy cookie monster.

A. The biggest part of the answer has to do with the shortening you use, although there are a few mechanical steps you can take to keep your cookies from spreading and becoming crisp. If you use all butter, which has a very low melting point, the cookies will spread out rapidly in the oven before they have a chance to set up. This is exaggerated if the butter is quite soft before you start mixing it. Using all shortening, with its much higher melting point, holds the cookie shape intact much better, but it doesnt do much for the flavor.

Shirley Corriher, food scientist and author of Cookwise, finds a compromise in a mix of half butter and half butter-flavored Crisco (a brand of solid vegetable shortening), but you lose some of the loft. She also says that "margarines have all the disadvantages of butter without its flavor advantage."

There are other steps you can take. Using cake flour instead of all-purpose flour tends to keep the cookie from spreading. Using baking powder instead of baking soda makes the dough slightly acidic, which also inhibits spreading (but remember that baking soda is four times as potent as baking powder, so increase the amount proportionately).

On the mechanical front, there are several things you can do to keep the cookies from spreading and becoming crispy.

Once its mixed thoroughly, put the dough into the refrigerator to set for a while. The cold dough wont spread nearly as much before it begins to set up in the oven.

Use a small ice-cream scoop to shape round cookies for the baking sheet. The higher and rounder they are, the less theyll spread.

Dont put the dough on a hot baking sheet, allow it to cool after it comes out of the oven. On a hot sheet, the dough will begin to spread before it starts to cook, and youve lost part of the battle.

Many people have come across the phony story and recipe to Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookie, which we wont bother repeating here. But Todd Wilbur, who has made something of a career out of recreating junk-food, Taco-Bell and International-House-of-Pancake recipes and compiling them into cookbooks, swears he came up with Mrs. Fields recipe on his own. The recipe, along with those for McDonalds Egg McMuffin, Aunt Jemima Maple Syrup, Hostess Twinkies, and other specialties, appears in Top Secret Recipes, and is as follows:

Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookies

(According to Todd Wilbur)

1 cup softened butter (2 sticks)

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
18 ounces chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 F (175 C). In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla. Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Stir in the chocolate chips.

With your fingers, place golf-ball-sized dough portions 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 9 minutes, or until the edges are light brown.

Resist the urge to bake the cookies for longer than 9 minutes, Wilbur says, even if they appear underbaked. You can substitute milk chocolate and/or add 1 1/2 cups of chopped walnuts or macadamia nuts to recreate other Mrs. Fields flavors.

We havent tried the recipe and cant vouch for it in any way. The differences between the Wilbur/Mrs. Field recipe and the standard Toll-House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe - much more brown sugar and less white sugar

(although more sugar over all), the addition of a little baking powder, a pinch more flour and a pinch less salt, and 50% more chocolate chips - seem pretty modest from the standpoint of trying to get a softer, loftier cookie. But, for your fussy cookie monster, it may be worth a try.