How to Make Chewy Cookies
The secret in making any cookie recipe into a soft and chewy cookie is to use Butter Flavored Crisco instead of butter. If you want a crispy cookie, use butter. The two fats act differently at the molecular level to produce the different final textures in the same recipes. Remember that butter will harden as it cools (crisp cookie) and Crisco stays creamy when cooled (chewy texture). Margarine is a spread made chiefly from vegetable oils and used as a substitute for butter. Butter is an edible emulsion of fat globules made by churning milk or cream. Crisco is vegetable based equivalent of Lard. Lard is the soft white semisolid fat obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of a hog. Shortening is just another term for the fat such as butter or lard used in baked goods.Since they all have different base components, they can be used interchangeably in many recipes, but there will be slight variations in the final resulting taste/texture. Often the changes don't make a huge difference, but they are there and personal taste and preference of the cook/baker will often be the deciding factor in which type of shortening to use in certain baked goods.Another trick to have chewier cookies is to cut your baking time by about 2 mins (baked at the temp stated in the recipe) OR reduce your oven temperature by 25 degrees and bake for the time stated in the recipe. Your cookies should be baked through, but not yet crispy. Always bake one batch according to the directions the first time you try a new recipe and then make any adjustments based on how that first batch turned out. You can then make a note about any "customizations" that you ended up doing, so that you remember what you did differently the next time you want to duplicate your efforts.

Yet More Cookie Tips

• The larger proportion of sugar to flour, the more tender and crisp the cookie. Brown sugar gives cookies a darker color and tends to cause a bit more spreading. Molasses, honey and maple syrup are also used for sweetening cookie recipes; cookies prepared with these sweeteners tend to have a softer texture.


• Cookies made with baking soda tend to spread more. Those made with baking powder "puff up" and tend to be more cake-like.


• Unless a recipe directs you to do otherwise, use large eggs.


• When using Oatmeal in baking Cookies, you can use either Quick Oats or Old Fashioned Oats, but never Instant Oatmeal. The Old Fashioned Oats give cookies a heartier texture and cookies made with Old Fashioned Oats tend to spread a bit more than those made with Quick Oats. Because Instant Oatmeal contains added ingredients, including sugar and flavorings, it cannot be substituted for quick or old fashioned oats in baking.


• Crisco can be substituted for real butter on a 1 to 1 scale (1 cup Crisco=1 cup butter, 1/2 cup Crisco=1/2 cup butter, etc.). Again, I have to reiterate, DO NOT substitute Crisco in a recipe where the cookies being made should have an overwhelming predominately butter flavor, such as shortbread, spritz or butter cookies.

I have had very good results when using parchment when I need to use a dark pan for some reason.

Remember the darker the finish on the pan (whether manufactured that way or just darkened from years of use), the faster the sheet will heat and the longer it will hold the heat. The shinier the pan you use the longer it will take to heat up. Dark absorbs heat, so your bottoms will be done more quickly than the tops or centers. By the time you tops and centers are baked, your bottoms will be crispy if not downright burnt. Shiny reflects heat and your cookies will bake more evenly.

Don't try to crowd too many cookie sheets into your oven at once. Your best results will be one tray at a time on the middle rack of the oven with plenty of room for the warm air to circulate around the tray. Don't keep opening your oven to peek, every time you do that, you lose warmth and the oven will have to struggle to maintain the correct temperature.

When you use real butter for baking purposes, use only unsalted butter unless otherwise stated. Recipes are created on the assumption that the baker will be using unsalted butter. The reason for this is that salt added in the manufacturing process can overpower the sweet flavor of the butter and can also mask any odors signaling that rancidity is starting to take place (the salt acts as a preservative). The amount of salt added to salted butter can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and it is hard to know how much extra salt to add to your recipe. The rule of thumb is that if you are substituting salted for unsalted butter in a recipe, omit the extra salt in the recipe (i.e. Omit 1/4 teaspoon of salt per 1/2 cup of butter). But even by doing this substitution, you still really have no control over the final amount of salt in your recipe since the amount of salt that is in the salted butter can vary before you do any omitting of extra salt in the recipe.By using unsalted butter and then adding a specific measurement of salt as called for in the recipe, you maintain much more control over your ingredients and will have a tastier final product.Both Crisco and Butter Flavored Crisco have 0 milligrams of sodium per serving, so they can be used without adjusting other salt measurements in recipes.

• For chewy cookies, I use butter flavored crisco (I buy it by the 5lb. canister). I always use Crisco, unless I am making a butter cookie like shortbread, then I will use the real thing.

I set my oven 25 deg less than what the recipe calls for and I under bake by a minute or two. Always make sure your dough is ice cold when you put it in the oven and make sure the pan you use is not still warm from the batch you pulled out earlier (your dough will start to spread and bake prematurely just from the ambient residual warmth and you don't want this to happen). I always run my cookie sheets under cold tap water after I have lifted the cookies off and then I hand towel dry the pan and put it back into the rotation (I always rotate between 4 and 6 cookie sheets when baking Christmas Cookies...one batch in the oven, one in the fridge all prepped to be popped into the oven, one batch being prepped (in the process of dropping the cookies onto the sheet or whatever in order to get the full pan ready for baking), and one pan clean, cool and sitting in reserve, waiting to be prepped.

In my baking process, I pull out a baked sheet from the oven and let it start to cool; I pull the next sheet out of the fridge and put into the oven; finish prepping the sheet I am working on and put into the fridge (replacing the one I've just taken out and put in the oven); remove the cookies from the cooling sheet and place directly on to wire cooling racks; rinse that just cleared sheet under cold running water, towel dry and place back into the cookie sheet rotation. By this time, your timer had dinged and it is time to pull that batch from the oven and start all over.

Work in small dough batches, making sure to cover and refrigerate any dough waiting to be used...don't leave all your cookie dough sitting out at room temperature, just take out smaller refrigerated portions as you will use them up filling your sheets.

A lot of this comes with practice and "feel". It is a baker's intuition that anyone can acquire with enough practice and experimentation.

Butter or no butter, here's my grandma's recipe for "Vanillekipferln", a traditional German cookie delicacy served at Christmas.

140 grams of finely chopped hazelnuts (I use a blender)
140 grams sugar
140 grams flour
1 egg
1 TBsp. vanilla extract
1-1/2 sticks of butter

Soften the butter to room temperature and then thoroughly mix with the sugar in a large bowl. Then add the other ingredients and mix well. Chill the mixture for 30 minutes and then form a "wurst" (sausage) on a floured cutting board. Dust the wurst with flour and then cut off small pieces to form crescent-shaped small cookies.

Place these cookies on a greased cookie sheet, leaving a space of about 2" between each. Preheat oven to 300 deg. and bake cookies until they're light brown (about 20-30 mins.) Optionally, dust them with confectioner's sugar after they have cooled. Store in cookie jar.

Karen, I thought that I had saved your recipe for Rum Balls before "eBay's delete key got stuck", but I can't find it. Would you please, PLEASE repost that recipe and any others that would be great for the holidays? Since I'm still fighting with the SSD people, money is a tad tight right now, so I'm making homemade "goodies" for everyone this year. Thanks for your help!

Sue

WHAT? Only 1/2 cup rum. Me and Macmike will add a bottle!!

;o))

Thanks for the recipe!

These are the most excellent sugar cookies, they just melt in your mouth! The dough has to chill for 8 hours or overnight, so this is a good recipe to throw together the night before a baking session. These are not cutouts, so they are much easier to deal with than traditional sugar cookie recipes if you have arthritis or stamina problems when it comes to rolling dough out, like I do.

Crisp Sugar Cookies

5 cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 c. vegetable shortening (I use Butter Flavored Crisco)
2 c. granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
Granulated sugar

1. Combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.

2. In a large bowl cream the vegetable shortening and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Beat in the vanilla extract. Gradually blend in the dry ingreients. Cover and chill for 8 hours or overnight.

3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease the baking sheets.

4. Pinch off walnut sized pieces of dough and roll into balls. Place the balls 1-1/2" apart on the prepared baking sheets. Dip the bottom of a glass in water and then in granulated sugar, and press to flatten each ball to a thickness of 1/4 inch. If desired, you can decorate with colored sugar sprinkles at this point, after the balls are flattened.

5. Bake for 8 to 10 mins, until lightly colored. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Yield: 5 to 6 dozen
Total time: 30 minutes
Chilling time: 8 hours

Just you wait....I have lots more "family tested" and true yummy cookie recipes, so I'll be posting one, two or more new recipes per day, depending on how much typing I feel like doing at any particular time.
:o)