2011-12-13-Cookies
Seminars@Hadley
Cookies, Cookies and More Cookies!
Presented by
Patti Jacobson
Linn Sorge
Moderated by
Dawn Turco
December, 2011
Dawn Turco
Good morning, it's Dawn Turco talking to you from
Hadley Central and it is my pleasure to welcome you
to today's seminar at Hadley. Our topic is Cookies,
Cookies and More Cookies. It's that time of year,
even the occasional baker gets out in the kitchen this
time of year to try and pull together a cookie recipe
and for others among us, we just love the cookies and
more cookies so today, we are going to talk
everything cookie.
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In preparing for today's seminar, our presenters and I
had a great time just pulling together the information
and we have quite a bit to share with you today.
Without further ado, let me introduce you to today's
presenters and they are familiar in the cooking area of
Hadley seminars.
Linn Sorge and Patti Jacobson
are both long-time instructors with Hadley. I'll release
the microphone ladies and you can just do a quick
hello and introduce yourselves.
Linn Sorge
Greetings, everyone. It's always so nice to see folks
who have taken some of my courses in these
seminars and we are very into cookies, the three of
us, so you've got a good group up here and I love
what Patti said earlier in that a smaller group is going
to give everybody a chance to feel a little more cozy
and kind of at home. I was talking to a colleague and
friend less than an hour ago and I stress that he said
he's really in the mood to bake cookies this year so it
isn't just the women, folks, I see a few gentlemen in
the room here.
Welcome and I'll let Patti tell you I tend to teach things
like word processing and technology and social
studies to parents but I assure you that it does not
mean I don't love to bake cookies. Now, I'll let you
talk to the person who teaches all about foods.
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Patti Jacobson
Hi everybody, I'm Patti. I am so glad that we're
having the cookie baking seminar today because I
love to bake cookies. It's one of my favorite things to
do. I am the instructor at Hadley for the food series
and one of the courses in this food series is Grains
and Sweets and I'd like to talk to you about some of
the information that's in the Grains and Sweets course
about cookies.
Just a little quick cookie primer, if you want to call it
that. There are about 6 main kinds of cookies. There
are rolled cookies, dropped, bar, refrigerated, pressed
and molded. They all have similar ingredients but
they have different proportions of ingredients and it
causes different consistencies of dough and then the
cookies are shaped differently. I'm going to go
through them really quickly.
Rolled cookies are the kind that has really stiff dough
and you roll out with a rolling pin and then you cut
them with a cookie cutter and bake them and
decorate them. Sugar cookies are a good example of
rolled cookies although not all sugar cookies have to
be cut out, as you'll see from our resource list and
we'll talk about that a little later.
Dropped cookies have softer dough and you drop
them or push them off a spoon onto the cookie sheet.
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You push them with your finger. Chocolate chip
cookies are an example of dropped cookies. Then
there's bar cookies and these are like brownies. You
spread them evenly in a pan and bake them. They
have softer dough, almost like a batter consistency.
Refrigerator cookies are high in fat and you roll the
dough into a log and then you wrap it and chill it and
then when you're ready, you cut the log into little
slices, little round slices, making a little round cookie.
Pinwheels are an example of that particular type of
cookie. Pressed cookies, these are some I've never
made. I have to admit that. Maybe some of you
have. They have very rich, stiff dough and you use a
cookie press to make them. Sprig cookies are an
example of pressed cookies.
Molded cookies, lots of cookies are molded cookies.
A very stiff dough, you break off a little piece of the
big clump of dough and roll it into a ball or shape it
into a crescent and that's an example of a molded
cookie. I wanted to talk a little briefly about cookie
sheets. If you have a cookie sheet that has too high
of an edge, the cookies will bake unevenly. You want
to have low edges.
Linn and I were talking, they even have cookie sheets
that don't have any edges and they're a little bit hard
to pick up and get in and out of the oven so I would
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recommend at least getting a cookie sheet with a little
bit of an edge. There are bright, shiny cookie sheets
and they bake cookies that have a delicate doneness
and then there are darker cookie sheets and the
cookies end up having darker bottoms. It's best to
bake with one cookie sheet at a time. You can
microwave bar cookies but other cookies aren't really
microwaveable. You can also freeze cookies.
Okay, I'm done with the cookie primer now. Linn is
going to tell us a little bit about some cookie baking
tips.
Linn Sorge
Cookie baking tips are vital for all of us in this room
who really want to make the classic cookie, perhaps
to send away as a Christmas or holiday gift. You
have to start out by getting all your ducks in a row or
ingredients in a row. Read your cookie recipe very
carefully and make sure you have everything you
need. Patti and I had a good old time sort of
comparing notes before we got together to do this and
it's always interesting to find out that she and I have
very similar techniques although we haven't baked
together personally.
I get all my ingredients out ahead just because that
way, I'm not worrying about it and I don't get part way
through and realize that I don't have something. I get
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all of my ingredients out ahead and I tend to put them
in one area on the counter, usually to my left and then
when I'm done with them, I put them on the right so
they're done and out of the way. It's as you would
read in Braille, actually, across a page, left to right.
Use it, put it over on the right, and be done with it.
I get my ingredients out, I try to follow the recipe the
way it says and we'll talk a little bit about reading
recipe techniques later on. I don't do other things
when I bake cookies if I can avoid it. It's not a time to
be playing fetch with your dog or chatting with
somebody on the telephone. Cookies need a certain
amount of time and if you miss an ingredient, they
won't turn out. You can't pump and roll quite as easily
as you could if you were making vegetable soup. If
they bake too long, they will be ruined. Let the phone
ring. If you have an answering machine, it'll go there
and you can pick it up right away.
Always make sure you have clean hands and
sometimes, if you use an apron, there's a clip on it
where you can clip a towel or even a damp rag where
you can just wipe your hands clean, whatever you
want and you'll know right where it is clipped. I don't
mean a dripping rag, but one that's just a little damp
so that you can quickly wipe off your hands. It keeps
everything clean, your spice containers, and your jars,
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the less messy your hands are, and the less messy
that sort of thing is going to be.
Another thing is to use good tools and utensils. Make
sure that you're using the kind of stuff that you know
how to use and that you're comfortable using. You
can get measuring cups in different kinds of sets.
You can get the typical fourth, third, half and whole,
but from the bigger cooking stores or online places,
you can even get one-eighth, one-fourth, one-third,
one-half and two-thirds, five-eighths, and then one
and a fourth and one and three-fourths and two.
One thing that's kind of a nuisance about them is that
you have to make sure that you have the right one. If
you use the basic four cups in the set, it's quite easy
to tell a fourth cup from a half but if you use the set
that might contain eight, be very careful to get the
right one. Always use the tools, get them out ahead,
have them ready and do a recipe that you're
comfortable with.
As Patti said, she hasn't made pressed cookies. I
haven't either, actually, just because I haven't. If you
are a beginning baker, don't take a recipe that looks
very complicated or that you might be a little leery of
doing it. Use something that will feel good when
you're successful with it. Also, use the right kinds of
pans. If it says a 9x13, that's what it needs. It doesn't
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mean a 10x12. An interesting thing about pans is
how do I know what a 9x13 is? You measure across
the top edge, the inside. You go from the inside of
one top edge to the inside of the one across from it. If
you want to measure the depth, if you're making some
sort of bar that says use a 2" deep pan, you put your
ruler down into the pan so that you measure the
inside from the bottom up to the top edge and that's
the way that you measure a pan.
Make sure that you use good-quality ingredients
whenever you can and the ingredients that it tells you
to use. If it says use butter, then you should use
butter. If it says margarine, it doesn't usually mean
the quickie soft-spread that you can get. It often
means margarine in a stick. Another thing to do is
pay attention to ingredient temperatures. Usually, it'll
say room temperature and that's what it means.
Things like eggs and butter, they usually should be at
room temperature because it helps the combination of
ingredients to work.
Check your expiration dates on baking powder and
baking soda and on eggs. If you don't know or you're
not one who uses them a lot, if you're a Braille reader,
put a little Braille note right in the egg carton that said,
"Bought December 12th, 2011," so later you think,
"How long have I had these eggs?" and here's a cool
little tip that I use.: If you think, "I wonder how old my
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baking soda is?" put a little baking soda into vinegar
and it should bubble if it's okay. Baking powder
should bubble if you put it into hot water. Those are
two good tips to be able to use to know if your
ingredients are still okay. If they aren't, that may be
why your cookies didn't turn out just the way you
thought.
Our resource list is going to have these cookie-baking
tips on it and they're a great set of tips and they will
tell you things like what makes a cookie spread more,
how to stop that spreading, you can add a little bit of
baking soda and it will help the cookies spread a little
more but that means you have to measure things
carefully. If you have baking soda and it says a
teaspoon, you don't just scoop out a heaping
teaspoon or you're going to have cookies spreading
all over the sheet.
Make sure that you measure things the way it is
stated that you should. If you're working in high
altitudes, then often you omit the baking soda from
your dough so that the cookies don't spread so much.
If you're doing flour, now again, Patti and I compared
notes; there are lots of types of flour. If it says allpurpose flour, that's what you need to use. Cakebaking flour might have other ingredients in it that allpurpose doesn't. Wheat flour gives different flour than
all-purpose flour. Read carefully.
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The tips do say that you should never scoop flour.
That's partly because if you scoop, you tend to push
and pack it down. Now, I must admit, I've baked
cookies for a long time and I do scoop now and then if
it isn't calling for sifted flour but before I scoop, I take
a little scoop and fluff up my flour in a big wide-mouth
container so it's all fluffy and not packed so firmly into
that container. If you're using nuts, make sure to
smell them. It is just awful to bake a cookie and then
it tastes odd and you're going, "What's going on with
it? I wonder what happened?" and what happened
was, you used old nuts and they taste sort of rancid or
stale so smelling them or just testing a tiny little piece
of one is another good way to make sure that they're
okay.
Now, room temperature butter, you say, "What does
that mean? How do I know what room temperature is
all about?" You want it to be so that you could just
put your finger in it and make a tiny little mark rather
than having kind of a mush and usually, if you take it
out about an hour ahead of time, you can get nice
room temperature butter. Don't microwave the butter.
If you microwave it, what's going to happen is that
some of it will be almost melted and some of it will not
be soft enough.
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If you think, "I'm in the mood to bake cookies today
but I don't have an hour ahead to do my butter," take
it and slice it into little pieces and that way, you get
more surface and it will soften in less time than that
recommended hour ahead. Often, people use
unsalted butter, it just depends how fussy you want.
If you're going to use salted butter, you might want to
take a little of the salt out of your recipe but don't take
all of it because the salt helps a recipe to maintain its
flavorings.
Again, back to this room temperature thing, if it says
room temperature, that means don't grab your eggs
out of the fridge; don't grab your milk out of the fridge
if it calls for milk. Take it out, let it set aside until
you're ready to use it. My tips are over and Patti's
going to share some of her.
Patti Jacobson
Thanks Linn. A little bit more about measuring. They
have dry cups for dry ingredients and cups for
measuring liquid ingredients. The liquid cups have
lines on them and if you have low vision, you can
probably see those lines. I have to tell you the truth,
these tips say don't use liquid cups for measuring dry
ingredients and vice versa but I use the graduated
cups for measuring both dry and liquid ingredients
because I can't adequately tell where the lines are in
the other measuring cups. You can get high-contrast
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measuring cups, different colors, so you can use light
colors for measuring dark ingredients and vice versa.
Level off with a knife or spatula and then feel with
your finger to see how level it is. Regarding the oven
temperature, preheat the oven for 10 to 15 minutes
before you start baking and try a test cookie or two.
See how they turn out before you start baking the
whole batch. Don't grease the cookie sheet with
vegetable oil because vegetable oil will make the
cookies burn and it makes the cookie sheets sticky.
It's a mess. Grease with Pam or butter, margarine or
something like that.
When you are starting to prepare your cookie sheets,
put your cookies on a cool cookie sheet. Don't just
take the cookie sheet out of the oven and remove the
cookies and then put a fresh batch of raw cookies on
the hot cookie sheet because they'll start spreading
and you won't get the quality of cookie that you want.
They also have parchment paper that you can use to
line cookie sheets with and silicone cookie sheets
which are wonderful. I think Dawn might have a funny
story about baking with silicone cookie sheets.
In baking your cookies, the tips say that they should
be uniform size and that is true. The tips go on to say
that you should weigh each cookie. Well, I wouldn't
do that. That would take forever. You can kind of tell
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by the size and you should put them about 2" apart
and use an accurate timer and then when you are
done, take them off the cookie sheet and move them
to a wire rack and let them cool the rest of the way.
Okay, Dawn, that's all of my tips.
Dawn Turco
Well done, ladies. For those of you hearing these
tips, don't worry about note taking, we have them on
our resource list and the three of us are home cooks
so we often refer to the pros on a lot of points and we
got some of our cookie baking tips today from
www.allrecipes.com and that will be cited on the
resource list.
We have a lot of questions that are coming in through
the text messaging lady and I will get to those in a
moment. I wanted to do a little quiz. We're all here
about the cookies today and when it comes to fun
facts about these sweet confections, I'm wondering
how smart of a cookie you all are. Here's a quiz, I'm
going to do a few questions throughout today.
For this first one, you can go ahead in the text
messaging area and put "A", "B", or "C", according to
your answer. Here's the question: What is the most
popular type of home-baked cookie? A. Chocolate
Chip, B. Oatmeal, or C. Sugar. All right, go ahead
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and put your answers in if you feel confident in one
and then just press the enter key.
We've got some answers popping in and it looks like
the predominant answer is the answer "A" and
indeed, the answer is chocolate chip. That was "A"
and more than 50% of cookies baked at home are of
the chocolate chip variety. We do love our chocolate
chip cookies here in the U.S., especially.
Of course, the first chocolate chip cookie came out of
the Tollhouse Inn in Massachusetts and we won't go
into that story today because we covered it in
Chocolate Chatters so feel free to go back and listen
to that seminar. Yes, the chocolate chip is the most
popular of cookies baked at home.
Here's another one, we'll do one more before moving
on: When baking at home, which of these is not an
explanation for hard-tough cookies? A. Too much
butter. B. Over mixing or C. Too much flour in the
dough. Go ahead if you'd like to punch in an answer.
Which is not the cause of hard-tough cookies? Got a
little bit of a mix of A's and B's. Nobody thinks C.
Nobody thinks too much flour is the reason. Again,
the answer is not an explanation. Here's the answer:
When baking at home, which of these is not an
explanation of hard-tough cookies? Too much butter.
If you add too much flour to the dough or you over mix
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the batter, yep, they're going to come out hard and
tough. If you add too much butter to the dough,
there's a good chance they're going to taste a little
greasy.
There are your first smart cookie questions and you
guys did really well. I have more, we'll interject them
later but I want to get some of this text messaging
questions in and then open up the mic. Ladies, one
of the early questions that came through is how do
you cut either log cookies or your brownies? How do
you cut those and keep them straight and even? Any
tips for us? I'm releasing the mic.
Patti Jacobson
Okay, one thing you can do when you're making
brownies is line the pan, the bottom and up the sides,
with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Foil would
probably be the best. When you're done baking your
brownies, lift the whole square of brownies out. You
let them cool, of course. Then you've got a square of
brownies without any sides to the pans. What I do is
fold a piece of foil or a piece of Braille paper into the
length and width that I might want my brownies to be.
I lay that on top of the brownies and cut along the
folded edge of the paper. It's a straight edge that I
can feel and it gives me a guide to use. That's what I
do.
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Linn Sorge
I do a similar thing with making a template. First I
make one that's out of a thicker cardboard if it's
harder for you to feel things, like a poster board,
almost. If you're worrying about getting it dirty, wrap it
in foil and then you can always keep it. I have one
that's half the size of my pan and then one that's a
fourth the size of my pan. First, I get the half and then
I take the fourth shape and put it on each half and
then very similarly to Patti, I found a place, and if you
look around you might be able to find where you can
get a spring form pan, either 9x9 or 9x13. It is the
handiest thing because you just, as you would with a
round spring form, you just release it and kind of
wiggle it a little bit and you're cutting it without that
edge in the way.
Dawn Turco
Thank you, ladies, and good answers. I had another
question. Any suggestions on how to roll out dough
for cutout cookies?
Linn Sorge
Yes, Patti and I had talked about this and there are
two things that I do. You can get a pastry cloth
sometimes that people often use for pie crusts. It's a
square, maybe 18x18 or 24x24; it makes your table
area a whole lot less messy. You can flour on it and
do that but let's say you're dough is supposed to be
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one-quarter inch thick or one-eighth inch thick. You
can go to a place like Lowe's Home Improvement or a
lumber yard and get dowel rods in various
thicknesses. I have fourth-inch and eighth-inch and I
make them as long as this little pastry cloth that I use
that has a rim around it or whatever you wish to do
and if I need fourth-inch thick, I put it on each side
and then I roll with my rolling pin and it works
perfectly. It rolls to the thickness of the dowel rods.
I need an eighth-inch thick, I use my thinner dowel
rods and I keep them right with my rolling pin in my
cabinet.
Dawn Turco
Thank you for that. We also had a question related to
the 2" apart and you see that in all the tips and all the
directions for cookies about keeping them 2" apart.
How do you guys judge 2"?
Linn Sorge
I measure my hand and discern a place on your hand.
Get a ruler and at the very base of your knuckles, is
that 2"? Is up by the second joint 2"? At the bottom
of the palm of your hand? Again, you can make a
little template. Just a little cardboard piece that's 2".
Wrap it in foil, maybe 2" by 2" and you can do that but
really, you know what Patti was saying earlier when
they said measure the cookie dough and weigh it? I
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never weigh it. As she does, I always use the
graduated cups. Now Dawn would probably not
because her low vision would help her to use those
clear lovely glass cups but for us, we don't always do
what the tips say.
Patti Jacobson
I think if you use your fingers, your index finger and
your middle finger apart, I think as far as you can
spread them, that's about 2". While you may not get
as many cookies on the sheet, you're probably safe
overestimating and they won't run together versus
underestimating and you often get a big cookie blob.
Dawn Turco
I'm going to open up the microphone. We still have
some questions popping in but I want to give the
people with a microphone a chance before we move
on so open the mic, folks.
Patti Jacobson
I'm going to interject a question that was emailed to
me. We have a student who is working in West Africa
and she knew she would be going to the archive
version of this seminar and so she sent a question in
and the question related to when you need to double
the recipe or maybe even triple the cookie recipe and
she does that this time of year for the kids she works
within the children's center in her area, she wanted to
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know if you need to do something differently, alter the
ingredients in any way? I have to tell you, I did do a
little research online, trying to answer that question
and most of what I saw seemed to indicate that with
cookies, you pretty much just double or triple and the
reason being, the end product, the cookie itself, is the
same size and so the surface area is the same and
people who had concerns about the baking soda or
the baking powder being adjusted, it seemed to
indicate that wasn't a big concern.
If you were going to be baking a cake and doubling
and tripling and then putting it into a bigger pan, that's
where you run into some alterations based on the size
of the pan but again, the cookie itself is still the same
size. One source I saw said the standard ratio is for
every cup of regular or all-purpose flour in your
recipe, you use one to one and a quarter teaspoons
of baking powder or one teaspoon of baking soda.
Danny, I hope that helps you as you are baking your
way into the holidays in West Africa. Happy holidays
to you over there. Okay, I'm releasing the mic again.
We'll see who comes popping in.
Caller
Hi, when I bake rolled-out cookies, cutout cookies, I
really have a hard time with the dough. I've almost
given up on baking them because when I roll it out,
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the dough always seem to just fall apart. I wondered
if there's something that I might be doing wrong or
that I can do to prevent that from happening? I follow
the recipes very carefully but I just can't do rolled-out
cookies.
Linn Sorge
I'll tell you the truth. I am not good at rolling out
cookies, either. I think it's because I handle the
dough too much and when you handle the dough, it
gets tough and dry and we're going to talk a little bit
about our recipes but I have a recipe in the resource
list for my favorite, sugar cookies, that don't involve
any rolling or cutting and they're just wonderful so you
might want to look for those.
Dawn Turco
I wanted to give a shout out to Goldie. Goldie's been
helping answer some of the text questions. Goldie is
lowvisionchef.com who is also on our resource list
and she knows what she's talking about so thank you
for trying to get some of the many questions that are
coming in. In the interest of time, let's move on and
we'll get another Q&A period going here but Patti, I
think I'm handing off to you now.
Patti Jacobson
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Okay, we're going to talk about tips and techniques.
We've been doing a little bit of this but one thing I
wanted to mention is that you should go with what
your comfort level is. What I mean by that is if you're
newly blind and you haven't really baked cookies
before as a blind person, you're scared of the oven,
get some help. It's okay. Practice with a cool or cold
oven first. Practice taking those cookie sheets in and
out and adjusting the racks and all of that because a
lot of what you do when you're cooking in the kitchen,
whether it's baking cookies or doing other things, is
muscle memory or kinesthetic memory. It's just kind
of getting used to how it feels to do things. Just do
what you feel comfortable with.
In preparing a recipe, you have your recipe either on
paper or in cookbooks or on the computer, on tape,
on Braille note takers and what do you do in the
kitchen when you've got maybe high-tech equipment
and you don't want to get butter all over your Braille
display. What I do, if I have computerized recipes or
on my Braille stand, I will read the recipe onto tape
first and then just work from that taped version. I can
wash my hands before I handle that equipment but at
least I'm not getting really high-tech expensive
equipment dirty.
You can buy - and Linn, you might know where to get
this - but you can buy plastic-type Braille paper that
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washes off and it's really great for recipes. Put the
racks in position before you heat up the oven. Make
sure your oven is ready. I had a friend one time and
she wasn't blind. This isn't a blind thing. She
preheated her oven with Tupperware in it and caused
a great fire.
The last tip that I wanted to mention was if you're
making something where time is of the essence and
you need to work quickly, pre-measure all of your
ingredients. Put them into little cups or dishes or
containers or whatever so that when you're working
and you need to hurry, you can just dump, dump,
dump into the pan or mixing bowl and you don't have
to take time to measure. Linn, do you have any extra
tips?
Linn Sorge
Yes, I will pick up where you left off. One of the prime
examples of what Patti just said is homemade fudge.
Time is vital. You don't have two or three minutes to
measure the nuts, chocolate chips, the marshmallow
fluff, so we both just measure ahead and dump.
Another trick, how do you get the dang marshmallow
fluff out of the jar? What I do is I take a two and a half
quart saucepan and I fill it with very, very hot water
and I've already opened my marshmallow fluff, gotten
the paper off of the top, then I close it tightly and put it
into the water when I start to make the fudge. It heats
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it up enough; it doesn't change it, until it comes out
without sticking all over to the jar.
I use bent measuring spoons when I am measuring
vanilla or other extracts or liquid. I get a cheap set of
measuring spoons because they tend to bend easily
and I bend them right above the bowl at a 90-degree
angle so that the handle sticks up. Then I dip the
bowl into the liquid measure and keep it right at the
edge of my mixing bowl or pan and lift it up and dump
it in. That way, its level and you don't spill.
I also use wide-mouthed jars to keep my ingredients
in so they're easier to measure. I do the same with
flour and sugar. I don't ever use them in a bag. I
know some people do that if they're going to make a
lot of things. They just leave the bag of flour on the
counter or the bag of sugar. It doesn't work for me.
It's not as efficient at all. Butter is another thing. How
do you measure it? I had a buddy of mine make me a
little butter stick out of wood. It's as long as a stick of
butter or margarine and it has a big slice all the way
across at the half point and at one edge it has a little
slice on one edge at the fourth and three-quarters and
on the other edge, where it'll say a third cup of butter,
it has a mark for that. Again, you can use a piece of
foil or paper folded up. As long as the butter's thick
and you can measure that with the butter stick being
cold and then you fold it in half and you can use it for
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a cut line or fold it again in half and you've got the
quarter cup line.
Those are very handy, inexpensive ways to do that
sort of thing. I also wash my hands thoroughly and if I
had a really stiff dough, I have a wonderful oatmeal
chocolate chip recipe that I love, but it gets so stiff
that it gets hard to mix and so I will mix it with my
hands as I would a meatloaf. Sometimes, it's just
easier to make sure everything is blended in there if
you use your hands, if they're clean and dry.
If you are using a cookie that you roll into a ball,
again, don't just keep doing it because your hands are
going to get sticky. After the rolling feels a bit
unsuccessful, go wash your hands and dry them off
and start again. Another thing is if you've got
something that's hot, I make a caramel chew that you
roll when it's quite hot, I butter my hands and that
way, nothing's going to stick that could risk burning
your hands.
I want to talk just a minute about working with the
munchkin patrol. That's part of what I enjoy, part of
what I've done and how I teach at Hadley. If you have
little ones in your kitchen, make sure that what better
thing to teach concepts than cookie baking. If you are
trying to work with them and you're a grandma, aunt,
adopted grandma, buddy next door, you can have two
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different things going on. You might have a little
sighted buddy that would want to come help you
decorate cookies. That's really nice because they can
use the frostings and the sugars and that kind of
thing. You can get frostings with little applicators right
on them. You can get colored sugars, colored
sprinkles, either on online places or just check the
baking section of your grocery stores.
You could also use things that are tactual such as red
hots, little chunks of gum drops, little chunks of
raisins, coconut, nuts, and create all sorts of
interesting designs on your cookies. When you're
working with little ones, make sure that they love
doing that, pushing stuff into cookies or sprinkling
stuff on top of it. Bring them in and let them get in the
fray.
Dawn Turco
Thanks, Linn. I love the templates and jigs that
you've developed. Teri mentioned in the chat that she
has a butter cutter, which does it into tablets like you
see in the restaurant and that helps in measuring out
the butter. I'm going to move on to one more question
on the smart cookie quiz and for the rest of them, I'll
just refer you to our resource list where I've posted
the sighting for this. Get ready. A, B or C. Which
cookie was invented first? The Oreo, Fig Newton or
Animal Cracker? This one's a little harder. Which
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cookie was invented first? The Oreo, A. Fig Newton
is B or Animal Cracker, C.
I think we might get a variety of answers on this one.
Okay, I'm seeing mostly B's and C's popping up and a
lot of hesitation. It is harder, this one. Last chance to
get in a guess. I'll tell you that the first one was the
animal cracker. It was produced in the United States
by the Stauffer's Biscuit Company in 1871 and then
the modern version of the Fig Newton was created in
1891, in case you didn't know, it was named after the
city of Newton, Massachusetts. Lastly, the Oreo
cookie was invented in 1912. Again, the smart cookie
quiz will be on the resource list.
Time is getting away from us and we've had lots of
good tips come across from Linn and Patti. Goldie's
been answering some questions along the way and I
know Goldie has a number of cookie tips on her
website so look for www.lowvision.com to get to
those. Because of the time, ladies, I'm moving
straight on to some of the final stuff. We're going to
discuss some of your favorite recipes we've added to
the resource list and we'll have to keep that brief and
any special equipment and yes, Patti, I'll tell the
silicone cookie story when I take the microphone
back.
Patti Jacobson
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Okay, that'll be fun. I'm just going to give you a little
preview of what I put on the resource list. I have a
Sour Cream Sugar Cookie recipe that you do have to
roll out and cut but it's wonderful. Then, Patti's
Favorite Sugar Cookies. You just roll them in a ball,
flatten them with a glass, sprinkle them with sugar
and bake them. Rum Balls don't involve any baking,
just mixing and rolling in powder sugar and if you
want to have a little sip of rum while you're doing that,
that's fine, too.
Then, Snow Balls. You roll those. No Bake Cookies,
you heat stuff in a pan and then add things like
peanut butter chips and oatmeal and nuts and
coconut and stuff like that. Then I have Oatmeal
Applesauce Cookies, Pudding Cookies, Fantasy
Cookies that have coconut and chocolate chips and
nuts, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, and then the
last one I have is called the Seven Layer Magic Bar
and it's where you use graham crackers, pour
condensed milk over it and it's a little bit tricky
because you have to do it evenly, butterscotch chips,
chocolate chips, coconut and pecans and almonds.
Man, is that good.
Linn, it's your turn.
Linn Sorge
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Those Seven Layer Bars are divine. What I do to
help with that condensed milk, because it's thick and
gloppy, and so again, I use my warm water trick. I
just put the can in for about five minutes into a
saucepan of very, very hot water and let it sit in there
and then its a little thinner when you spread it across
these bar cookies. Again, thinking of the kiddos, the
little guys, they love to roll balls. I love to roll balls so
maybe I'm still a child at heart in some of my spirit. I
hope so.
If there are things that are a little harder for kids to do,
then they can always roll balls and put them in sugar
or push them down with a glass. If you've got
preschooler kiddos that maybe aren't quite up to all
the measuring and stirring, they love to roll balls and
push with a glass and things like that. The resource
list is looking really good. I have one, Dawn doesn't
know this yet, but a friend of mine sent me one just
last night and I'm going to tell about it because it
sounds interesting and it's easy.
You can get refrigerator chocolate chip cookie dough
or even stuff in a little tub or you can just make it
yourself if you really want to do that. These are called
Snickers cookies. There are two sizes of Snickers.
One is a fun-size and one is a tiny little miniature
square. I always get the fun-sized and want to eat
them because the other ones are almost too small.
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You get these little tiny square ones and you slice off
or flatten out about a fourth of an inch of chocolate
chip cookie dough, you put the little snicker bar in the
middle and wrap it around it and bake it. That's going
to be there on the recipe list.
If you want something that's easy to use, as Patti was
saying, kind of a starter cookie that gets you going
and builds up your confidence. If you think about it
and you're a Braille reader and you're not comfortable
taking cookies off of a sheet, if you put the sheet so
that it is horizontally across your body, left to right, the
widest part, then you can take two Braille cells next to
each other, so you've got to lift out four rows of three
cookies and if you lose track, just envision those
Braille cells expanded.
We had an experience when I was teaching at
University and we had a student who was extremely
capable but her family, and this was a college
student; never let her take cookies off. When we did
a cookie baking afternoon with our students, she said,
"Just let me keep doing it 'til I'm comfortable," and she
was sitting there, happily taking cookies off sheets. If
it's something you're unsure of, just say, "Today, I'm
going to practice. If I break a couple, that's okay, but
I'm going to practice and get my confidence up." We
want cookie baking to be fun and something that you
look forward to doing just as the three of us do.
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Now we get to hear Dawn's story.
Dawn Turco
You know, I think I told this one in an earlier seminar
where we were not as experienced with the silicone
products out there and I had just gotten the baking
sheet that you put on the cookie sheet. I used the
cookie sheet I have with no sides and if you will
picture me going into the oven with my trusty hot
pads, pulling out my cookie sheet just in time,
forgetting that I had used the silicone sheet and that
sheet completely slid off of the cookie sheet into the
oven and the cookies went tumbling all inside my
oven. I had one royal mess.
I thought about throwing it out and never using it
again but I'll be honest, I have gotten quite attached to
my silicone products now and am far more
comfortable with them, so that's my story there. I will
tell you, I did not add lots of recipes to the resource
list this time because quite honestly, we had them
start coming in from Hadley's staff and students and
then Linn and Patti added significant numbers but I
did add one favorite that I do this time of year. I
thought it would be one of its kinds on the resource
list because basically, its doggie treats. I have a little
dog and her gift to her friends is homemade treats.
This is a recipe that is just fabulous. I've tried several
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and this is the favorite and it might have something to
do with a little beef bouillon being in there and I use a
little bacon fat in it but her doggie friends just love it.
If you have a dog and want to try some doggie treats,
the recipe is there for the taking.
We had invited people to submit recipes in advance
for our resource list and as I said, I thought my doggie
treat was unique. Linda, actually a former employee
of Hadley and now a student of Hadley's, sent one in
and hers works for dogs but it also works for horses.
This resource list was beginning to shape up to be
quite unique and I will tell you that as it was
developing, we had a variety of other recipes come in
which includes one which is gluten-free and I have a
good friend who has to eat gluten-free so I was really
happy to see that one come in. Watch for that one on
the list as well.
I see that Linn has her hand up. Let me release the
microphone before we move on. Linn?
Linn Sorge
This is just a quick tip that I should have mentioned
earlier but forgot. There is a thing called an 'Ove
Glove and Patti and I use them all the time. We
compare it to being able to use your fingers as you
would in a thin comfortable glove compared to the
klutzy thick mittens if you're using mitts and you can
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get them at lots of stores. They have fingers so that
when you are working in an oven, you have a thumb
and forefinger that are safely covered and protected
but they move independently of each other. Sighted
or blind, but for blind folks, these are wonderful. Look
for 'Ove Gloves.
Patti Jacobson
Excellent. My last little thing I was going to share,
and I'm relatively new to this, I bought a cookie
scooper and it looks very much like an ice cream
scooper but smaller. In fact, I just saw it referred to in
the text messaging going on. It has the nice release
so you do not have to quite so much use your fingers.
Ever since I started using my cookie scooper on my
chocolate chip cookies, I don't have that problem
where I've got them all kind of different sizes. Some
crisp, a little more, some a little raw in the middle. I
do like my ice cream-like cookie scooper. It's just
smaller and I think it was referred to above as the
Number 40 Scoop. Who knew? That's the Number
40 Scoop, thank you.
Dawn Turco
We're winding down, folks, and we have two fun
things I want to talk about. One, on the resource list,
I've put an activity for those of you who are working
with kids or have your own kids. It's called "Cooking
with Math" and it's an activity for doubling a recipe of
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chocolate chip cookies and it's all there for you so you
can click on that and find out about the cooking with
math. I'm going to end this seminar today with a fun
YouTube video. We saved it 'til the end because we
were worried about it potentially knocking some of
you off so we're playing it last and we invite you to
stay for it because it's the Cookie Monster, of course.
"C is for Cookie" and we have the Cookie Monster to
sing us out of this seminar today but before we do
that, we wanted to do some of the farewells and
remind everybody that this seminar is archived at the
Past Seminars page at Hadley.
We invite you to use it and share it with others. We
invite feedback. That resource list that we've been
referring to is 20-something pages long, I think, now
so if you have a last-minute recipe you'd like to submit
and have me get it into that list, I will be watching for
those recipes for the next two days. I actually looked
this morning and two had come in overnight so we will
be getting those onto the list shortly. Go to the
seminar's archive, both for this recording and for the
resource list. Ladies, I'm giving the mic back to you
for just some final thoughts before the Cookie
Monster sings us out.
Patti Jacobson
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Thank you everybody for attending today. I hope you
had fun. I have and I just wish you happy cookie
baking and have a very blessed Christmas.
Linn Sorge
As I said, we want cookie baking to be fun and when
you're thinking, "Oh, I've got to give a gift to
somebody this holiday season that has everything,"
think about homemade. It is a gift of your caring, of
your time and there are cookie recipes for diabetics,
as Dawn said gluten-free, so share a gift of your
caring and time and even those little furry ones like
Dawn's little doggie, you could give a gift from your
doggie to someone else's. Thanks so much for being
with us; it's always great fun to do these kinds of
seminars with my two buddies here so I wish
everyone a safe, healthy, and somewhat delicious
snacking as well, upcoming peaceful holiday season.
Dawn Turco
And folks, it wasn't a huge group today, but my
goodness, you were talkative, you had such
wonderful questions, many of which we were able to
get to. Many questions Goldie answered; it was kind
of nice having you sitting by there, Goldie, helping
out. If you have any further questions that come to
mind or that we didn't get to, again,
feedback@hadley.edu is the place for those
questions. If you have ideas for future seminars,
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again feedback@hadley.edu or that recipe you'd like
to get into the list, we are happy to get it into the list
and I don't care how many pages that list ends up
being because they really are fun and are often used
by people listening to the archives.
I, too, will add my happy holiday wishes to all and
thank you for participating and we still have a good
group in the room so I hope you are able to get this
Cookie Monster "C is for Cookie" tune that I'm about
to push at you. We've not tried this before and for
those listening to the archive, the link to the YouTube
will be available on our resource list so you, too, can
listen to Cookies. Now I have to release my
microphone so that it will play so let's keep our fingers
crossed. Here we go.
I hope you all could hear that as well as I could and
perhaps you even got the video pushed through.
That was for the kids, we do have classrooms and
families that listen in on these so we hope you
enjoyed that. I hope you're not cursed like I was,
singing that song for the rest of the day. All right, we
are coming to the close now, officially. Thank you all
for your participation today, we had a lot of fun and
hopefully some good information and get out there
and bake some cookies. Thank you.
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[End of Audio – 1:00:15]
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