Technique matters

Happy Friday, everyone!

Today I'm making cookie doughs for orders tomorrow.  Two types of cookies, both of which need the dough to chill overnight before baking.  While making one of the batches today, I came up with an idea for today's post.

Technique matters.

I was making a batch of pecan ice box cookie dough.  In fact, I was planning on making more than one batch today plus dough for French butter cookies.  I set out all my ingredients.  I had everything ready.

I put the shortening (not butter for these cookies) and two types of sugar in the mixer and let it do it's work.  Then I got ready to add the eggs and vanilla.  But my mind was elsewhere and I wasn't focused on what I was doing.  I was finishing double checking the weight of the flour and baking soda, and then instead of grabbing the eggs and vanilla which were already whisked in a separate bowl, I tossed in the flour.  The mixer immediately started combining it with the sugar and shortening mixture.  And then I saw the eggs and realized that I had made a mistake.  I dumped in the eggs just to see whether this could be salvaged.  So instead of the eggs being mixed in the proper order, with the shortening and sugar mixture, they were going in after the dry ingredients.

The picture above shows on the left the cookie dough with the eggs going in at the wrong time, and the one on the right was done properly.  It can clearly be seen that the one on the left does not hold together the same as the one on the right.  And no amount of pressing and molding with the hands will change that.  The one on the left is lost, gone, finished, unusable unless one wants to experiment.  There is no way it will yield that same cookie that the one on the right will yield.  The ingredients are exactly the same, down to the gram.  But the order of mixing makes a huge difference.

Technique matters, whether it's the order of mixing for individual ingredients, how long something is mixed, how fast the mixer beater is moving, whether it's done by hand or machine, etc.  You can have great ingredients and a great recipe, but in the end the technique to bring it all together must be the right technique.

Here is the shaped block of dough from the good batch of dough using the proper mixing order.  This is now in my freezer where it will sit overnight until morning.  Then it will be sliced and baked and sent out with people who will enjoy it.

For all my recipes, I continually improve the techniques with little adjustments over time.  And I notate all of these in my recipe database.  I back up the file as well.  Twice!  I never want to lose track of those tweaks, those technical adjustments which are so vital to turning out something that is scrumptious.

Enjoy your weekend.  I'll post again probably on Sunday.