Shaping Techniques, Baking Hints For Quick and Easy Recipes
Most drop cookies are made from quick and easy recipes. They are basically small cakes with a soft and chewy texture.
This type of cookies is made from soft dough that can be easily portioned on baking sheets in one of three ways:
Spooning - Pick up a portion of dough with a spoon, then push it onto a baking sheet with another spoon or rubber spatula. For uniform baking time, try to pick up the same amount of dough each time.
Scooping - Use an ice cream scoop with either a spring handle or thumb levers. Overfill the scoop and scrape off excess dough on rim of bowl.
The number of a scoop is equivalent to number of servings in each quart of ice cream. For example, you get 16 servings out of 1 quart of ice cream if using a No. 16 scoop.
No. 70 scoop is equivalent to a teaspoon.
No. 64 scoop is equivalent to a tablespoon.
Rolling into balls - Many quick and easy recipes calls for rolling dough into balls of specified size. Before baking, they are often flattened slightly with the flat bottom of a drinking glass or, in case of peanut butter cookies, the tins of a fork.
Hints for Baking Drop Cookies
Allow room for cookies to spread by spacing at least 1-inch apart, especially those having liquid sweeteners as an ingredient or a high ratio of sugar and butter to flour.
Avoid overmixing to limit aeration. This will keep cookies from over inflating in the oven and then falling flat when the heat is gone.
Bake one sheet at a time on the middle rack for best result.
If you must bake more than one, divide oven into thirds and double pan on the lower rack. Switch pan about 1/3 of the way during baking, and also rotate pan back to front for even browning.
Use one of the following quick and easy recipes for drop cookies.
Images are courtesy of On Baking - A Textbook of Baking and Pastry Fundamentals by Sarah R. Labensky with Eddy van Damme, Priscilla Martel and Klaus Tenbergen. 2005 Pearson Education, Inc.
