Frozen cookies…. better?
When last I made chocolate chip cookies, I fought my natural urge to bake the whole batch, then eat cookies morning, noon and night until they were all gone. I “flash froze” most of the batch and stuck them in a ziploc bag on the freezer door, where they could taunt bda every time he opened it.
Last night, I took pity on the poor man, and offered to bake a few for dessert. Shockingly, they came out better than the first time I made them! The original recipe made claims of being both crispy AND chewy. The first batch was just straight crispy. This batch actually had some levels of chewy! They didn’t spread nearly as much. They were doughier in the center (in a good way.)
So, I have a few hypotheses.
First, I have an extraordinarily bad habit of putting things in the oven before it is totally preheated (one of the many reasons I am not much of a baker.) This time, the oven was totally preheated.
Second, the original recipe called for the cookies to be baked at 325. I baked this batch, per some instructions I found on the Internet about frozen cookies, at 375.
Finally, and most obviously, this dough was frozen, not room temperature.
I suppose it’s also possible that being made a while in the past could have some effect, but this seems the least likely to me.
So, bakers out there, tell me! Which do you think was the reason that this batch came out chewy and more delicious, with the same batter, baked for the same amount of time, in the same oven, by the same clearly-not-of-the-baker-breed cook?
