CKNotes 4: Easter egg shortbread cookie stovetop baking experiment #2, 4/17/14

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Easter egg shortbread cookie stovetop baking experiment #2, 4/17/14

This time I got the right amount of butter. The ingredients you see here were measured by eyeball. About 2 heaping spoons sugar, 4 heaping spoons flour, pinch of salt, 2 T butter. This photo shows the actual portions and the spoon, (for size reference).

Cream the salt, sugar, and butter together well. Cut in the flour with a fork. Start working it with your fingers when it seems they will do better than the fork. This got to where it looked as if it might not need liquid. It was almost holding together without liquid. I let it sit like this a bit while heating up the pan.

The dough needed a touch of liquid. I did not trust that one spoon of (cold) water was enough, and used two spoons. Immediately it felt like too much. The dough was sticky... Mix quickly and briefly, without giving the gluten a chance to develop. You don't want to make glue. Handshape the dough on a piece of plastic wrap. Lightly grease with butter the piece of tinfoil cookie sheet. Flip the dough/cookie over onto the tinfoil. Crimp the perimeter with fork tines. Perforate the cookie in a pattern so that you can break the cookie apart later, but also to keep it from buckling when it cooks/bakes.

Lay the cookie sheet with the cookie, on the cookie rack - a double sided tinfoil accordion fold construction. Cover with a little tinfoil tent, shiny side in. The cast iron fry pan has been heating up with a cover over it. My stove is electric. I use the 3.5 setting for most cooking. (between Lo/1 and Hi/9. Things will burn there if one is not careful. Carefully slip your assemblage into the pan, trying not to raise the cover too much. You don't want to lose heat if you can help it. (No, I don't bother with a toaster oven as I don't trust it.)

After 25 minutes I peeked at the cookie. I turned it around, (not over), thinking the burner heat might have been uneven. But the cookie had brown around all the edges. It had better come off the heat right then. Was it to be split before or after it cooled? I let it cool a bit before this pic of it, and took my chances on splitting it later.

When it was completely cool, I broke off a wedge with the fork. Yes, it cracked in another area. The proportions of the ingredients is just right in this cookie. Yesterday's attempt had too little butter, and the weird leftover non-dairy creamer I used for the liquid gave it a funny taste. Not a good cookie. The texture of this one is good, but it does not have a 'butter' taste that I associate with shortbread. Maybe it should have had a touch more salt, or a bit of grated orange peel for zest. It will be fine with raspberry jam, though it is already almost too sweet.