Hi,

Good news for cookie lovers and beach bumps (I’m one of you), Winter is almost over. Hang in there. 🙂

I’ve posted the following recipes since the last issue of Smart Cookies. Please check them out.

Cream Cheese Brownies – Just as You Like Them. Baking cream cheese brownies from scratch is easier than you imagine. It’s your choice to keep chocolate and cream cheese layers separate or to create a marbled effect by swirling them together.

Snowball Cookies with Chocolate Chips and Coconut. These snowball cookies are loaded with chocolate chips and coconut flakes. Having no flour, they are special sweet treats to cookie lovers who are on a restricted diet.

Crispy Potato Chip Cookies. An unlikely cookie ingredient, potato chips put potato chip cookies on the list of preferred sweet. Some other ingredients are butter, rolled oats, brown sugar, flour.

Valentine Cookies – Perfect Tokens of Affection. Baking valentine cookies is a thoughtful way to say you love and care about all the important people in your life.

Butter Crunch Clusters. This easy kid cookie recipe illustrates how to prepare and avoid common mistakes in making delicious butter crunch clusters.

Cookie Exchange Ideas and Tips. Discover my favorite reason for hosting a cookie exchange party, in addition to other ideas and tips.


Recipe Comparison

This segment is to give you a general idea of possible taste and texture cookies might have before you actually bake them. It is not to determine that one recipe is better or worse than the other.

A butter cookie is the mother of all cookies. It is consumed by the pound from those ever-familiar Danish cookie tins. Believe it or not, it is basically what you have left if you were to remove all the different flavors and textures from many of the “classic” cookies.

In this issue of Smart Cookies, we will compare ingredients of two (2) recipes for butter cookies.

R 1One Dough – Fifty Cookies: Baking Favorite and Festive Cookies in a Snap by Leslie Glover Pendleton. First Edition. William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York. 1998.

R2Sweet Maria’s Cookie Jar by Maria Bruscino Sanchez. First Edition. St. Martin’s Griffin, New York. 2002.

1 cup = 8oz = 16 Tbsp = 48 tsp
1 whole egg is approximately 2 oz., yolk is about 0.5 oz. and the white 1.5 oz.

Amount Baker’s %
R 1 R 2 R 1 R 2
All purpose flour 4¾ c. 2½ c. 100% 100%
Unsalted butter 2 cups 1 cup 42% 40%
Granulated sugar 1 1/3 c ¾ cup 28% 30%
Whole Egg 0 2 oz 0% 10%
Egg yolk 1.5 oz 0 4% 0%

Egg yolk has lots of fat and is considered a shortener. Similar to butter, it gives cookies a texture of melt-in-your-mouth tenderness. R1 yields cookies that are more tender because it has a higher percentage of fat. Using whole egg makes R2 cookies crisper, sturdier, and tougher.


How to Make a Cookie Platter

  • Cover a flat tray or plate with a doily.
  • Layer flat and sturdy cookies on the bottom, lighter and more delicate cookies on top.
  • Alternate rows of chocolate, vanilla, and other flavors to create a desirable contrast in color.
  • Wrap the entire tray in festive cellophane and ribbons.

From Sweet Maria’s Cookie Jar by Maria Bruscino Sanchez. First Edition. St. Martin’s Griffin, New York. 2002.


Published date: February 15, 2007

Copyright 2007 by Trinh Lieu. All right reserved.