Mix It Up
If you stop to think about it, baking a cookie is all about creating something new out of ingredients which are like building blocks. Some ingredients, such as flour and eggs contribute to the actual structure of your cookie. They help it hold its shape. Other ingredients like sugar and fat give your cookie the tenderness that most of us enjoy when we bite into the cookie. But did you know that how you combine the ingredients determines how your cookie will hold its shape and taste?
Mixing your ingredients ensures that they are all evenly distributed. It also adds air to your recipe, giving your cookie a porous (think less dense) structure. The next time you are mixing your ingredients, you can say, “Now it’s time to add the air.” Whip, cream, knead, fold, and sift may all sound like arbitrary baking terms, but they are really scientific ways to ensure your baking has the proper structure and aeration needed to be successful. Hmm, does mixing do anything else? I hope you said yes.
Think about each of your ingredients. Would you eat any of them raw from the measuring cup? It’s probably not a good idea. But when you take them, mix them, and bake them, you get something completely different from your starting point. Where did that magic happen? It started in the mixing bowl. A lot is happening as your mixer is spinning around and around.
Have you ever seen smooth rocks that were worn down by water continually flowing over them? Well, your mixer is breaking down the larger particles and molecules of your ingredients. And until those dry molecules dissolve into the liquids, they can’t behave properly. This is why most recipes call for some amount of water. Flour, sugar, salt, baking powder – all of them need to dissolve first.
That last fact brings us to our last ingredient that we are going to talk about, and it’s an important one. Leavening agents can make your cookie rise up and make you a star baker. Or they can leave you feeling flat and deflated. It’s important to understand them well.
You already added air bubbles to your dough when you mixed your ingredients together, but that’s usually not enough. Leavening agents cause gases to form and expand your dough. Now here is an important fact. Leavening agents do not add a single new air pocket to your bake. They expand the air pockets you created when you mixed your dough.
Some of this reaction starts in your mixing bowl and some of it continues as your cookies heat up in the oven. This is why you don’t typically leave your dough sitting out for a long period of time before you bake it. If you’ve measured out all of your other ingredients properly, your cookie dough will be tender enough to stretch as the gases expand and yet strong enough to dry out and hold its structure as it bakes firm.