Woman’s Home Companion Cook Book – Part 17
I have really been trying to savour the last few chapters but think it high time I shared another one with you.
The chapter on Cookies reads as follows:
“Were the cookies in a blue jar or a brown one at your house, and did they sprinkle sugar on them or put raisins in them? Were you allowed to cut them into fancy shapes all by yourself? What kind did you ask for when you went away to school or camp? Answers will vary, but the basic fact is that cookies have always had a happy and honorable place on the pantry shelf. Let’s hope they always will have.
Ingredients
Flour: Unless otherwise specified, all-purpose flour is called for in the recipes in this chapter. In some recipes either cake flour or all-purpose gives satisfactory results, but if the all-purpose flour in your locality is a strong one – that is, made from very hard wheat – it will make a slightly harder cooky. A soft-wheat flour makes a tenderer cooky.
Shortening: A number of shortenings are suitable for making cookies, Butter is always a favorite one for flavor, but margarines and vegetable shortenings are more often used because they do a good job and are less expensive. In a bland cooky in which the flavor of the shortening is distinctive, part butter and part vegetable shortening gives good results.
Sugar: The sugar called for in the recipes in this chapter is granulated sugar unless otherwise specified and the finer grains are preferred. For butterscotch flavor use brown sugar, medium or dark.
Milk: Either whole milke or evaporated milk may be used. Because cookies require so little liquid, undiluted evaporated milk is convenient and practical. In some recipes calling for 2 or 3 eggs, 3 tablespoons of evaporated milk may be used in place of 1 egg.
Eggs: In making cookies, fresh eggs are best for flavor. Eggs vary in size, and in cases where the dough must be exactly of a certain stiffness the size of the eggs may make a difference. For this reason, and also because flours vary in thickening properties, it is wise to bake one or two cookies as a test before baking the whole batch.
Mixing and Shaping
Cookies may be made by hand or with an electric mixer. In either case, assemble all the ingredients and measure them before starting the mixing process.
In general there are two types of cooky mixture, soft doughs and stiff doughs.
Soft-dough Cookies: Soft doughs contain a larger proportion of liquid than stiff doughs. Cookies made from soft doughs include those dropped from a spoon and those spread in a plan like a thin layer of cakes, of which brownies are a familiar example.
Stiff-dough Cookies: Cookies made from stiff doughs included rolled cookies, refrigerator or sliced cookies and cookies shaped by forcing the dough through a cooky press.”
The chapter continues with correct ways to bake and store your cookies as well as all the different forms of decorations and has 28 pages crammed full of different cookie recipes.
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