These are cookies I’ve attempted unsuccessfully dozens of times. That may be an exaggeration. These are cookies that I’ve never gotten right. (I should say with readily available recipes. I have a secret recipe from a bakery which is not part of the public domain, but absolute perfection. Sorry.) I’ve used high quality public recipe sources, too.
My most recent recipe was taken from Cooks Illustrated Special Collector’s Edition All-Time Best Recipes (From the First 100 Issues of America’s Most Reliable Food Magazine), no less. My previous molasses spice cookie disaster was an unreliable source, so I’ve never really held that against the recipe. I take responsibility for wasting my own good ingredients and ending up with my personal ‘most horrid cookie ever’ award.
Beyond recipe, I also give much leeway for the fact that my home oven does not actually hold even near correct temperatures, more than one spice in my cupboard is a hand-me-down from my parents after their most recent move (2 years ago), and I’m occasionally liberal with vanilla extract.
These qualifications do not account for the cookies I turned out the other morning, which I made for a bake sale! If they were for personal consumption I would sigh and agree with myself again that a delicious cookie recipe is hard to find.
So, when I read the adjoining article (after making the cookies, of course – well, I wanted an explanation for why mine looked NOTHING like hers) I discovered two things that, if done differently, would maybe yield entirely acceptable results. One, Dawn, the recipe developer, thinks the egg white made her cookie too cake-y. My cookie could have used some fluff. Two, Dawn decided that 1 teaspoon of baking soda would give the cookies ‘nice height.’ If this is nice height I have shortness issues.
What was genuinely impressive about the recipe was the taste. Frustrated at my first batch out of the oven that looked like a single large sheet cookie rather than the very cute, round, orange sugared dozen that entered the oven, I decided to eat one for vengeance. The problem of them melding into one meant that I really could only eat about ¼ of that ‘one’ before my stomach was crying for mercy. I realized this was the wrong solution and moved on to make tiny cookies (which turned into full sized ones) baked at a higher temperature for less time.
So they’re still flat and ugly, but at least they’re round instead of cookie pull-aparts. The flavor is excellent. But considering how mine didn’t quite work out, the special orange sugar coating was all work, no glory. If I try this recipe again, I’m adding the whole egg.
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