Use Science to Improve Your Cookies!

One of my favorite food bloggers, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from Serious Eats, has done a fantastic article about the science of cookies, specifically those of the chocolatus chipis species. He covers everything from the difference between using melted and creamed butter to egg yolks vs. egg whites to dough temperature and everything else in between. You can find the original article here along with a recipe but in order to get you into the kitchen faster, I present to you the condensed version:

Do not replace butter with other fats (eg. shortening, margarine, lard). The proteins in butter are essential to the flavors in your dough.

Melted butter will produce denser cookies while creamed butter will make cakier cookies.

Cookies made with browned butter will come out softer because of less gluten development. However this may cause it to break more easily.

A higher proportion of egg white to egg yolk will result in a taller cookie while a higher egg yolk to egg white ratio will result in a more dense, brownie-like cookie.

White sugar is pure crystallized sucrose. Brown sugar is mostly sucrose, but also contains glucose and fructose (more hygroscopic than sucrose) with trace minerals that give it flavor and a slightly acidic pH.

Cookies made with 100% white or 100% brown sugar

Cookies made with slightly acidic brown sugar cause them to rise more and spread less because the brown sugar reacts with baking soda (a base) to make bubbles that provide lift. Cookies made with white sugar do not leaven, but they are more crisp because sucrose does not hold water molecules as well as glucose and fructose.

Incorporate your chocolate chips halfway through the wet-dry mixing process to avoid over-mixing your dough. Excess kneading causes more gluten formation which can produce tough cookies.

Incorporating chocolate into dough that has been heated to 80 degrees F will allow some chocolate to melt, leaving chocolate trails in the cookie, while still leaving chunks intact to melt into pools of liquid delicious.

That $25 bottle of Madagascar bourbon vanilla extract is indistinguishable from imitation vanilla flavor.

Baking your cookies at a lower temperature will result in more spreading and more even cooking. But don't go too low, otherwise there will be not textural contrast between the edges and the center.

Leaving dough in the refrigerator overnight will allow time for flour proteins and starches to breakdown and rearrange so that your cookies have a richer flavor and more better browning.

Cookies rested for four hours and two days before baking

HAPPY HOLIDAY BAKING!

All photos: Serious Eats

FOODucation: Cacao

Hey everyone,

Happy Friday!! Patricia Tsai is a chocolate maker who recently opened ChocoVivo in Culver City. She has her own supplier of cacao beans and uses the age old tradition of stone grinding cacao beans to produce chocolate products. Nothing in her store contains milk powder, soy lecithin, or additional cacao butter meaning all her food items are as natural as possible.

Given that National Chocolate Milkshake day was yesterday, September 12, it seems appropriate Patricia is hosting "Frozen Hot Chocolate Nights" through this weekend only (September 12 - 15). If you're interested in checking it out send an RSVP to info@chocovivo.com with the Subject: "Frozen Hot Choco." It costs $20 BUT you get to try the following four items: 75% Cacao, Shangri-La (black sesame + goji berries), Mayan Tradition (Cinnamon + Spicy), Coffee + Vanilla Bean all topped with Organic Strauss Creamery Vanilla Bean Ice Cream!

Here's the link to her website and more info.
http://chocovivo.com/category/events/

Now for the FOODucation! (information based on her website and Ted Talk)

Patrica was on Tedx where she discussed the bitter side of cacao and her journey as a chocolate maker. As with most crops, they have specific environments with which they can grow. Since the cacao bean can only grow 20 degrees North and South of the equator, 70-80% come from Africa. Unfortunately large companies dominating the chocolate industry take advantage of this, without naming businesses and just knowing a few things, it's easy to see why Patricia is an artisan chocolate maker. In Africa, child slavery remains an issue and often times children are sold as slaves to carry bags of cacaos until there are visible signs of injury such as open wounds. (more info on this inhumane labor found here, http://www.foodispower.org/slavery-in-the-chocolate-industry/)

Unwilling to compromise her morals, she cares about the way the beans are sourced, the way it is processed and how she can give back to the community. She took the time, 5 years to be exact, to get to know her cacao supplier and understand the process. Patricia wants her customers to understand how she gets her beans and how it is processed to make her products.

ChocoVivo uses techniques that were once practiced by the Mayans and Aztecs, stone grinding. The heat generated by the stone grinding heat and melt the natural cacao butter creating a paste. The outcome is a pure product that has not been adulterated. One of the chocolate bars she produces only has four ingredients: cacao nibs, unrefined cane sugar, black sesame and goji berries.

The result of Patricia's hard work and dedication to chocolate is a business that produces quality products while still being socially conscious.

If you want to watch the Ted Talk here's a link!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgX4JzKSLMo

Enjoy!