I am Domestic Man!

[elfs]

It was only a moderately productive day. After getting Kouryou-chan up and dressed, I made her breakfast (oatmeal, the thick-cut kind) and lunch (cucumber, cream cheese, and sushi rice sandwiches), then got her to school. I did laundry and paperwork while watching the next four episodes of Kannaduki No Miko (Priestess of the Moon... man, what a pain to eke that out of the Kanji, even with my beloved SKIP dictionary!), then went out to do a little shopping. I picked up Kouryou-chan from school after I was done. I didn't buy anything.

We baked cookies this afternoon-- chocolate chip, and I didn't burn them this time! Dinner is in the oven while we listen to Schoolhouse Rock. She's determined to memorize that "Count by Fives" song. I don't mind.

Comments

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

You might want to look at some of the recipes from 'Good Eats' on FoodTV; specifically relevant are Overnight Oatmeal from the Oat Cuisine program and the three chocolate-chip cookie recipes from the Three Chips for Sister Marsha program.

The oatmeal recipe is trivial -- a cup of steel-cut oats, two cups of whatever dried fruit you like, four cups of water, and half a cup of half&half dumped into a crockpot before you go to bed, and it's ready in the morning. That recipe has spoiled me for rolled, quick, or instant oats; the texture and taste is so much better.

The cookie recipes produce different results -- thin, puffy, and chewy -- and the transcript from the program explains how altering the fat used in the recipe (butter/margarine), the sugar proportions (white/brown), and whether you refrigerate the dough all work to change the way the cookie comes out.

Oh, yes... and the one thing that works more than anything else for letting you do a batch of cookies without burning them is consistency Get yourself a disher at a cooking-supply store and use it to scoop the dough onto the pan, so you get a consistent size for the ball of dough. Consistent size ball, all the cookies take the same time to bake, so you don't have variations in doneness.

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

The way I insure non-burnt cookies is threefold.
1. Good kitchen timer and I don't forget to set it in between batches (oh, I hate when that happens).
2. Two cookie sheets.
3. Dough in fridge in between batches, trays in freezer.

Each tray starts in the freezer empty. I then take it out, take out the dough, and scoop out the dough. The dough is cold, the pan is cold. Otherwise, the second set of cookies starts at a higher temperature and that's why it burns.

The first batch usually is the test case, simply because the dough varies depending on ambient temperature, humidity, and how steady I was measuring the ingredients that day. After I get the right amount of time, every other tray should be the same.

I even usually manage to sneak in about 4-5 minutes of reading per tray ;)