23 April 08 re: the larder, part 2: cookie dough

m-c:

So, you remember a while ago I was telling you about my "larder" strategy, where I keep supplies of prepared ingredients on hand to make my everyday cooking faster and easier?

mb:

I do indeed. The first installment was about braised greens, correct?

m-c:

Right. Well, today's installment is about cookie dough.

mb:

Tempting!

m-c:

And yet not too tempting, since I keep the dough frozen. If I had a whole recipe's worth of cookies sitting around in the kitchen, they would disappear all too quickly -- and I don't even have that much of a sweet tooth. But if the dough is in the freezer, it's handy without being too handy.

mb:

Do you need a special kind of dough?

m-c:

Nope, as far as I know, any ordinary drop or roll or press cookie dough will do fine. It can't be gloppy, like brownie dough, but I've tried it now with chocolate cookie dough and gingersnap dough, and I intend to keep some kind of frozen cookie dough on hand from now on.

mb:

Do you have to make it up in any unusual way?

m-c:

You don't have to, but I've decided since I'm going for fast and easy here I'm going to make the dough up in my food processor. I'm sure there's some loss of textural goodness, but once the dough has been frozen and then cooked it's not a "biscuit à haute valeur" (classy cookie) anyway.

mb:

Um, does everybody know what you mean by "making the dough up in your food processor"?

m-c:

I take the ingredients and amounts from a normal cookie recipe but then instead of creaming the butter and sugar together in one bowl, mixing the dry ingredients in another, working the dry into the creamed, etc., I just dump everything in the food processor, whir them just until they form a ball, and I'm done.

mb:

That's it?

m-c:

Yup.

Then I roll the dough into a long log and wrap it in some kind of protective wrapping.

I haven't yet settled on the perfect wrapping. I did the chocolate cookies in waxed paper and then wrapped the whole package again in foil. The gingersnap dough, which is the one I'm working on now, I wrapped in plastic wrap, and I'm having trouble getting the wrap out of all the nooks and crannies in the dough. I dread the thought of coming upon a well-cooked morsel of plastic wrap in one of my cookies -- I dread Mark's coming upon it even more.

So maybe the waxed paper and foil is the best I can do.

mb:

OK, so now you've got this long log of cookie dough in your freezer. What comes next?

m-c:

I slice it off the frozen log with my big sharp knife (a cleaver would work well too). If I'm making the dough into cookies, I just lay the slices on a baking sheet and put them into a 400° oven. In the case of the gingersnaps, 7 minutes is all it takes to bake the cookies at the thickness I've been cooking them. Of course the cooking time will vary depending on how thick you cut them and whether they're still frozen when you start baking them.

I've tried pressing raisins and nuts into the cookies after they're baked, and it doesn't really work. The dough has baked with a little bit of a crust, so essentially you're making a kind of raisin tray. But if you don't mind balancing the raisins on the way to your mouth, they taste great.

I assume I could let the dough warm up a little and press raisins or nuts into it while it's still raw. I haven't tried it, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

mb:

You said if you were making them into cookies. What else can you do with them?

m-c:

Ah, many things. You can let the dough thaw out a little and press it into little tart molds, bake them blind -- probably 4-5 minutes at 400° -- and fill them with berries.

You can crumble the dough while it's still frozen and use it as a topping for a fruit gratin, a crumble, or a crisp.

mb:

What's the difference between a crumble and a crisp?

m-c:

If it comes out crumbly but not crisp, it's a crumble. If it comes out crispy, it's a crisp.

mb:

Better living through vocabulary.

m-c:

As usual.

mb:

Well, this larder thing is sounding better and better. I look forward to hearing more.

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