New Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

I tried a new oatmeal cookie recipe and it took me 3 times to get it right. It is from the new book Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts by Claire Clark. She is Thomas Keller's pastry chef, and he also appears as co-author. I always seem to have problems with cookies. I am beginning to think that the moisture in my flour at home differs considerably from the restaurant's. I had to add an extra 50 grams/ 2T of butter to this recipe so the cookies would hold together enough to get them on to the cookie sheets in some sort of cohesive ball. The first time I made the recipe, they just fell apart and no pinching (as described in the book) would hold them together.

I took the test versions of cookies to work and made the recipe available on the table next to them. Something happened which never crossed my pea brain. The recipe was in grams with the equivalent weights in ounces. One of my co-workers picked up a copy of the recipe and made it that night at home for her husband. The next day, she stopped by my office to ask me why the recipe didn't work for her. The cookies melted and baked into one big flat cookie mess, the opposite of my problems. They tasted good but she stated hers didn't look like mine. It was only after a few minutes of discussing her disaster, that I realized what she had done. She had made the cookies from the recipe thinking the ounces were volume measurements. She must have had a soupy mess of a cookie batter. I converted the recipe into American volume measurements for her. We will have to wait and see if she is successful in her second attempt.

I also found that the author's had not included any salt in this cookie recipe. Without salt the taste seemed pretty flat. I added 1½ tsp of table salt and that brightened up the flavor considerably. I even tried adding a couple of teaspoons each of honey and molasses. This seemed to help too, but in the final batch I left it out - next time I'll have to try adding those again ???

I have a few more recipes to try in this book and hope they are less problematic than these first cookies.

Foams and Whips

I am trying out new recipes to create hot and cold foams and whips (whipped cream). I am using a Liss bottle that takes nitrous oxide charges. I made a rum whip cream for a dinner party using one of my guest's favorite rums (Meyers) to flavor the whip cream. He loved it- "best whip cream he ever had." I had a really weird thing happen, when I ordered a pint bottle from Liss they sent me a bottle that wasn't theirs, at least we think it wasn't. It may have been a bad production model. As soon as we notified them - they fixed it. We are going to mail the weird bottle back and see if they can solve the mystery of its origin. It had too many threads and the Liss heads won't fit tightly enough to hold a charge.

For my Friends in far places who aren't cooks - these are called whip cream whippers. Can you pick out the bad bottle???