baking with herbgirl - small batch butter cookie edition

[herbgirl]

It was about time for another ABV edible and Mr. Herbgirl requested butter cookies. A discussion ensued as to what constitutes a butter cookie. When I think butter cookie, i think of these tiny little shortbread-like cookies that my Grammy would make. Hubby just said, no, not shortbread like a little crumbly, but, butter cookies. I don't have any butter cookie recipes in my arsenal so I went a-huntin'. Allrecipes to the rescue! I smell lesson 2!

But first we must prepare!

A few more tips to *instantly* make you a better baker

-If you haven't already, go read baking with herbgirl - brownie edition.
http://fuckcombustion.com/viewtopic.php?id=4823
absorb. repeat.

-Accept the fact that all ovens are dirty lying bastards. It's in their nature with all that expansion and contraction, they can't help it. Get on your hands and knees and scrub out all that crusty carbonated schmutz that is contributing to uneven heating. A dirty oven does not bake well. Then, go get an oven thermometer, put it in, and marvel at how it is fifty degrees hotter than the oven display shows in one spot and 25 degrees hotter in another. if it's a digital display, often it can be adjusted, dials, you just have to compensate for the difference manually. i.e. get to know your oven, they are all different. Work around the inevitable hot/cool spots and use them to your advantage. Or maybe do what I (OK, Alton Brown too) do and leave a pizza stone on the bottom of the oven all the time (not an electric oven and don't cover any of the holes even the tiniest bit) to even out temperature swings.

-Don't stand there with the oven door open. Take your baked good out or test quickly. Opening the door lets out heat and may add to baking time. It can also stop and start the leaving process resulting in unevenly textured baked goods.

-Quality control is important. if you really care about the final product quality, put in good ingredients. that Harshey's cocoa from the dollar store may be cheap and it may work, but chances are the results will be less than spectacular due to fillers or just low quality stuff to start with. Same goes for kitchen equipment, you get what you pay for. I've scrimped and saved what little money I have to get a KitchenAid mixer, Weber grill and Excalibur dehydrator and they were all worth every single penny- expensive and not disposable. I will have them for YEARS and when they break, i will get parts and fix them myself.

-Use the correct, fresh ingredients. Don't use Jumbo eggs if the recipe calls for large eggs. If the recipe says All Purpose Flour, don't use bread flour, cake flour, self rising flour, whole wheat flour or biscuit flour and expect the same result. Same goes for butter. Rarely is there a baking recipe that calls for salted butter, assume that any butter in a baking recipe is unsalted. If you only have salted butter, you can use it if you reduce the salt in the recipe. Problem is that salt levels vary so you are guessing just how much to knock it back. Unsalted butter is usually fresher too as there is no salt to preserve it and keep it on the shelf for ages. Baking powder looses it's leavening abilities in about a year and old eggs do not whip as well. The list goes on and on.

-Use the correct pan or cookie sheet. Quick bread loaf pans are different than sandwich loaf pans which are different than meatloaf loaf pans. Cookie sheets without a rim will brown cookies better than a cookie sheet with a rim (which is technically a jelly roll pan anyway). Too small and the stuff won't fit or have space to rise, too big and you may over bake because things spread out. Different materials affect bake times differently. Dark pans usually bake quicker than light colored ones. Get to know your pans.

-Use the lowest powered device needed to get the job done. Rarely do I take my mixer to 'eleven' except for things like whipping cream or egg whites. 75% of my mixing is done with the lowest three speeds on my mixer. Cookies and other stiffer doughs never go above medium. Muffins, pancakes and other quick bread type things are done by hand. Over aggressive mixing leads to tough dry baked goods.

And now for the recipe...
FC'rs have been requesting a high butter small batch cookie so this is what I came up with based on the Allrecipes Butter Cookies II recipe. This is a pretty versatile recipe, it can be a spritz (cookie press thingie) a drop cookie or a sliced one, also known as an icebox cookie. This recipe uses a mixing method known as the creaming method, a specific sequence to create a fine grained end product.

<<<HERBGIRL'S SMALL BATCH BUTTER COOKIES>>>

Yield 16 cookies

Hardware
2 cookie sheets rimmed or not
stand mixer or hand mixer
stout wooden spoon, mine is bamboo
rubber spatula (from spatula city
turner (i call this a spatula too, ya know like for pancakes and cookies)
fork
large bowl
small bowl
tiny bowl
measuring spoon set
measuring cup set
wax paper, parchment or plastic wrap
cooling rack

Software
1/2 cup of butter (FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, NOT MARGARINE) enhanced any way you choose. I evaporated tincture made from PGA & 22 grams of hastily water cured (1 quart of tap water, two runs and about three minutes total) ABV to a goo and mixed it into the butter.
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 large egg (yeah this is weird, but i was going for small batch - just eyeball it, like two tablespoons)
1 1/3 cups All Purpose flour
1/8 t iodized table salt
1 t vanilla extract (don't you dare use imitation-blech)
green food color paste (fake as all get out but pretty - not required)
3T green sanding sugar for rolling the dough log in. optional but also pretty. you could use sprinkles, coconut, nuts, whatever, but they will all bake up slightly differently
non stick cooking spray

Gather Hardware and Software
Allow butter to sit at room temperature until it's soft and malleable, but not so much that you could put your finger right through it. The sharp corners of the sugar cut tiny holes in the butter that trap air and make for leavening and this cannot happen if it's not in the right temperature range. This makes for a fine, close grain.

Get your mis en place on

Flour and salt in the big bowl, sugar in the medium one egg and vanilla in the tiny one and the 'goobutter'(TM) in the square glass
Put butter and sugar into mixer bowl and start to mix on low speed, preferably with a paddle attachment versus a whisk type. Drop in several drops of paste food coloring if desired.

Gradually increase the speed to no higher than medium and beat until the mixture is lighter in color and somewhat fluffy, about 2 minutes. Do not over beat, your cookies will spread and flatten if you do.

Add 1/2 egg and vanilla extract and mix on low. Stop mixer and scrape down the bowl. Beat on medium for 30 seconds or so, until thoroughly combined. Did I say not to over beat?
Put in flour and salt and mix on low, stop and scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula and mix until a dough forms and there are no streaks of flour remaining, use that stout wooden spoon to get the last bits. Oh yeah, Don't over mix!

Dump dough out onto wax paper and form into a rough log, rolling the wax paper around it to refine the log shape.

Refrigerate for at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 400 and place a rack on in the center position or 2 racks evenly spaced, or two racks close like I did.
Prepare cookie sheets with non stick cooking spray.
Unroll log and put sanding sugar on wax paper. roll log evenly in sugar.

Slice into 16 even slices and place them, evenly spaced, on a prepared cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly brown around the edges, switching cookie sheet positions halfway through baking time. If you use the sanding sugar, keep a careful eye on those edges, the sugar burns very quickly and the ones closest to my oven wall got a little burned on the bottom.
When lightly browned, remove cookie sheets from the oven and allow cookies to remain on the sheet for a minute or so to set up.
Use the turner to transfer cookies to cooling rack for a few minutes.

This is one baked good that you can enjoy warm from the oven, no need to fend anybody off, just don't burn yourself.
After cooled store in airtight storage or freeze.

Not really what i was thinking of as a butter cookie, but very nice. Could be a good base for many flavors if you switch up the extract.

The butter flavor was not as strong as i expected it would be but what really blew me away was the light pleasant canna flavor that shined through. I usually do not like that flavor and the ABV is especially nasty. The very rudimentary water cure seemed to be enough to remove the horrid burny flavor and leave the pleasant aspects of it behind. At just over a gram per cookie, the two we ate last night weren't very strong, but they were mighty tasty.

 

[VWFringe]

I had really good butter cookies last night...Brown Butter Sea Salt

some sort of gourmet bakery to the supermarkets

changed my mind about butter cookies, they had a delicate and dry-ish texture with a slight hint of salt that was kind of nice (usually I don't like hints of salt in cookies, but this was there on purpose, not by accident, so it was okay)

 

[herbgirl]

they sound yummmmmmmmy

 

[VWFringe]

EDIT: Browning butter ruins it for absorbing THC, but you CAN add canna-butter to browned butter, get you potency and flavor (just don't try to make cannabutter out of browned butter)
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don't know where to put this info, but think it can help, I'll try to condense later
i think the gourmet butter cookies used brown butter, after reading this article.

from Salon.com, a great place to go for really good information,

[h] How to brown butter, and bake it into brownies [/h]

A classic technique to get more flavor out of butter, good enough to be a sauce on its own. Or to amp up brownies

By Francis Lam

Today, we're going to talk about how to clarify and brown butter, but before we start, let's take a look at what's actually in butter. "Wait, what's in butter? Isn't butter just butter?" Pipe down, kids, we're about to talk about it. And no one likes it when you shout your questions just to make yourself look smart, Stanley.

So: If you look on the nutrition facts label of standard unsalted butter, you'll see that in one tablespoon (14 grams) of the stuff, there are 11 grams of fat. A little quick division, and you see that only about 73 percent of the butter is fat. (Actually, that's not correct either, since butter legally has to be 80 percent fat or more, but accepted rounding in the math lets the label show less fat, so as not to scare consumers.)

Anyway, the point is this: There's a lot in butter that's not butterfat. The vast majority of that is water, and then there are milk solids, which are mainly sugars and proteins. Normally, all those elements are emulsified together, but you see them break apart when you heat it -- ever notice how butter sizzles in a hot pan? That's the water boiling furiously out of it. That foaming? That's a mix of proteins trying to hold onto water that's desperately trying to escape. And then, of course, there's the browning.

Remember that the milk solids in butter are mainly sugars and proteins?

That's the key. See, where there's sugar, there can be caramelization. Where there's protein, there can be meaty browning. Where there're both of them, there can be THE BOMB.

Brown butter is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Evocatively called beurre noisette (hazelnut butter) in French, it gives God's own grease a sweet, nutty flavor, turning in its smooth richness for one more liquid, dark and complex. It's a classic "sauce" nearly on its own when splashed with a little lemon juice or vinegar to brighten it, maybe with some shallots and capers to bring it up even higher, or some chopped nuts to accentuate its fatty goodness. Herbs like parsley, thyme or rosemary get all happy in there, too, chopped and tossed in at the last second. Spoon some on sauted chicken, fish or pork, and you're in business.

But brown butter is one of those things that can turn on you in a second. It just gets more and more flavorful as it browns, until it hits some evilly magic point that turns it black, bitter and nasty. (There actually are uses for "buerre noir," but I tend to leave that napalm alone.) So for beginners, it's best to brown your butter slowly.

The safest way I've found to do it is this: Put a heavy, light-colored pan over medium heat. (Black-bottomed or nonstick pans make it hard to see the color.) Cut the butter into one-inch pieces, so that they melt and color evenly -- you don't want a big lump of butter still sliding around solid while stuff is already burning around it.

If you're using just a small amount of butter, there's really no mystery. Just let it get hot, foam and settle, and keep a close eye on the color of the milk solids at the bottom. Like caramel, the darker they are, the more complex the flavor, but the jump from dark to burnt is a shockingly quick one, so err on the side of safety. If you're using this is as a sauce, add your lemon juice or capers or whatever else immediately, as it will help to cool it down and set the color.

But if you're using a larger amount of Paula Deen's best friend -- as in the recipe below -- you can work it a little more precisely. I like to use a lower heat, more medium to medium-low, to get a nice even color. As the water in the butter eventually comes to bubble up and boil, be careful -- it has a tendency to splatter. Gently swirl the pan so that those bubbles dissipate a bit, and use a heatproof rubber spatula or spoon to clean up any early-browning bits along the side of the pan. (Don't throw them out -- just start adding them to whatever you're going to put the butter on or in.) Stir often while cooking. Eventually, you'll cook off the water, the milk solids will settle at the bottom, and the foamy proteins will look like a scum at the surface. You can skim it, if you'd like.

At this point, what you're doing is clarifying the butter, and if you keep the heat pretty low, all the water will eventually evaporate without the milk solids browning. What you'll be left with is crystal-clear pure butterfat. (It's great for sauting and high-heat cooking that you can't normally do with butter.)

But let it keep going on the flame, and the solids will brown after a few minutes. Watch the pan. Once they turn a medium brown color, take them off; they'll keep coloring from the residual heat.

The brownies below are from a recent issue of Bon Appetit magazine, and are fantastic. Instead of using chocolate, the recipe calls for cocoa, letting you use brown butter as the fat, which flavors them with that subtle, round nuttiness. I've modified the recipe to crank up that brown butter flavor, using the milk solids from twice the amount of butter -- and you get to keep the extra!

[h]Brown butter brownies[/h]

Modified from Alice Medrich, published in Bon Appetit, Feb. 2011

Makes 16 brownies

[h]Ingredients[/h]

• 2 sticks of unsalted butter (Don't freak out! You'll only really use half of it.)[/*]
• 1 cup sugar[/*]
• cup unsweetened cocoa powder (you'd be amazed at how much difference there is in cocoa powders; get a good quality one)[/*]
• teaspoon salt[/*]
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract[/*]
• 2 teaspoons water[/*]
• 2 large eggs, cold[/*]
• 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour[/*]
• 1 cup walnuts, lightly toasted[/*]

[h]Directions[/h]

1.Preheat oven to 325 F.

2.Line an 8x8-inch baking pan with aluminum foil, pressing it into the corners of the pan and leaving a couple inches of overhang. (You're going to use this to lift the brownies out later. Genius! This is what you get for using recipes written by real professionals.) Rub a little butter over the foil to grease it.

3.Melt and brown butter, as described above.

4.While the butter is still in the early stages of cooking, combine the sugar, cocoa and salt in a fairly heatproof bowl.

5.Have a second heatproof cup or bowl ready. When the milk solids are beautifully browned, either pour or scoop out cup (8 tablespoons) of the butter into that cup, being careful to keep all the browned bits with you in the pan. Then all at once dump the butter from the pan into the bowl with the cocoa mixture. Scrape in all the browned bits stuck to the pan, unless they're burnt. Add the vanilla and water, and stir to blend. It will come together like rough concrete. The mixture should be fairly hot; let cool for 5 minutes. (You get to keep the extra butter for other uses; store in fridge.)

6.Beat in one of the eggs vigorously. It will look horrible. The butter will probably separate out of the cocoa/sugar mass, and it will start to make you very sad. About now, you will be cursing. Beat in the second egg, though, and watch it all come back together. Egg saves the day!

7.When your mixture looks shiny and uniform, add the flour and stir until blended. The recipe continues: "Beat vigorously 60 strokes." And seriously, they're not kidding. As you work it, the gluten will develop in the flour and make it firmer and tougher. Just take a breath, hold on and crank it.

8.Stir in the nuts, and scrape the batter into the baking pan. Bake 25 minutes, or until a toothpick in the center comes out not quite clean (there should be a few moist crumbs sticking to it). Cool the pan on a rack, then lift the brownies out with the foil. Cut into four strips, and quarter those to make 16 brownies.

Francis Lam is a Senior Writer at Salon. Email him at flam (at) salon (dot) com, and follow him on Twitter: @francis_lam. More: Francis Lam