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Almond Butter Cookies
Jan. 26th, 2020 03:21 pmDiscovery of the day: almond butter cookies do not spread like chocolate chip cookies do, and if you want them to come out the proper texture you really do need to flatten them beforehand. (Also I think my jar of yeast might be dead, but that's a separate issue.)
I attempted to use Baking By Flavor for the first time. Aside from an irritating obsession with vanilla-scented sugar, which I'm NOT
MAKING, it seems to be fairly legible and well-written. I made almond butter cookies, which I was using as a substitute for peanut butter cookies, and I think they would have gone better if I hadn't drained off some of the separated oil when I first bought the jar. The problem is I don't like/can't digest it when it's overly oily and I'm using it to make sandwiches, but when you're baking with it you really want it to have all that oil. This is probably part of why the batter came out kind of sandy, the other part being that I omitted the shortening and just used all butter instead of part butter and part shortening.
I refuse to believe that vanilla-scented sugar adds enough flavor to something as strongly flavored as a nut-butter cookie for it to be worth using, though. I could see that being good in something that's very delicate or where the predominant flavor is supposed to be vanilla, but in something like this, the almond butter is going to drown it out. I think many of the recipes in this book call for vanilla-scented sugar for no apparent reason. In the vanilla section-- its conceit is that it's divided up into sections, each of which calls for a specific predominant flavor- that might make sense, but I think it very rarely does in the rest of the book.
Incidentally, as far as baking goes, I really need to start figuring out more options for savory baking. They have to exist, and they can't all involve twenty steps of boiling in malt powder the way soft pretzels do. Even if it's just "a few more variations on types of bread loaves", it would be welcome-- though ideally I want some savory quickbreads.
I attempted to use Baking By Flavor for the first time. Aside from an irritating obsession with vanilla-scented sugar, which I'm NOT
MAKING, it seems to be fairly legible and well-written. I made almond butter cookies, which I was using as a substitute for peanut butter cookies, and I think they would have gone better if I hadn't drained off some of the separated oil when I first bought the jar. The problem is I don't like/can't digest it when it's overly oily and I'm using it to make sandwiches, but when you're baking with it you really want it to have all that oil. This is probably part of why the batter came out kind of sandy, the other part being that I omitted the shortening and just used all butter instead of part butter and part shortening.
I refuse to believe that vanilla-scented sugar adds enough flavor to something as strongly flavored as a nut-butter cookie for it to be worth using, though. I could see that being good in something that's very delicate or where the predominant flavor is supposed to be vanilla, but in something like this, the almond butter is going to drown it out. I think many of the recipes in this book call for vanilla-scented sugar for no apparent reason. In the vanilla section-- its conceit is that it's divided up into sections, each of which calls for a specific predominant flavor- that might make sense, but I think it very rarely does in the rest of the book.
Incidentally, as far as baking goes, I really need to start figuring out more options for savory baking. They have to exist, and they can't all involve twenty steps of boiling in malt powder the way soft pretzels do. Even if it's just "a few more variations on types of bread loaves", it would be welcome-- though ideally I want some savory quickbreads.
