This time, I tried to iterate on the base recipe I started in Part I.

I iterated on the last recipe by taking the first set of modifications I tried in Part I, using the applesauce recipe and tried a couple more options.

  1. I added a refrigeration step to chill the batter.
  2. I halved the spices, to let the cookie stand out more.
  3. I made the cookies a bit smaller (0.5 oz) to match the OCP cookie size a bit better.
  4. I substituted some of the oat flour for regular (or gluten free) flour.

This results the recipe below, using both GF and regular flour:

OCP v. 0.2

Make some number greater than 24 cookies.

Ingredients

4 oz oils:

  • 3 oz coconut oil
  • 1 oz grapeseed oil

4 oz sugar:

  • 2 oz white sugar
  • 1 oz corn syrup
  • 1 oz molasses

8 oz flour:

  • 3 oz oat flour
  • 3 oz all-purpose or all-purpose gluten-free flour
  • 2 oz corn starch

leavening:

  • 1 t. baking soda
  • 1 t. baking powder
  • 3 T. applesauce

misc:

  • 1/2 t. salt
  • 2 oz raisin paste
  • 1 t. spice blend (2:2:1:1 cinnamon, cocoa: mace, clove)

Starting procedure

  • Sift flours, salt, and baking soda/powder in a bowl.
  • Cream together oils, sugars, raisin pasted for a couple minutes.
  • Add applesauce to the wet stuff and mix together until incorporated.
  • Add dry bowl to wet bowl and mix until incorporated.
  • Chill dough in the refrigerator for an hour.
  • Roll into balls and roll balls in sugar to coat.
  • Dollop onto a silpat-lined cookie sheet (in 0.5 oz balls) and bake at 325 F for 8 minutes.

I did some rapid iterations on working with this dough to see how it did.

I. Standard

regular flour on the leftregular flour on the left

gluten free on the rightgluten free on the right

Notes: Hey, the flour one got some crinkles. But they’re not flat enough, and I’m not sure the sugar crust is doing what I want texturally. Still tasty though - could stand to be more molassesy, now that the spice is reduced…

These cookies also are lighter - probably due to the normal flour and halving the spices?

II. Flatten balls before coating

These are flat again, but the crinkles are gone… and the less-than-desirable sugar crust is still there.

III. No sugar crust, 0.6 oz cookies

Hm, ok, these are now just mostly like the old cookies now…

So it seems like I’m not likely to get closer to where I want here. Let’s try some some things out that will probably make the cookies unpalatable, but I’m interested to see what happens

IV. No sugar crust, additional baking powder (1/8 tsp), 0.6 oz cookies

These weren’t as bad as I’d feared, but I’m no closer to the intended crackly-chewy effect. A bit cakier.

V. No sugar crust, additional baking soda (1/8 tsp), 0.6 oz cookies

The floured on in particular maybe started to look the part, but these were basically inedible. Seems like the wrong way to go, especially with how overloaded these were with baking soda…

Summary

I made variation III out of the rest of the dough. They were good, but I don’t think I got closer the soft-yet-crackly and delightfully chewy consistency of the real thing. Seems like I’ll need to try a different direction…

I’m not sure the flour substitution really helped, though I thought it would. I may go back to just oat flour and starch next time.

Also, It became clear when toning down the spices that the cookies could really have more molasses - perhaps that may be part of the equation to look at next.

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