JOURNAL: Gingered Duck (Cookies) II

In preparation for the Gingered Duck Cookies, I made a few dozen traditional Swedish ginger and bacon fat cookies to help me consider my adaptation scheme. I think I can just swap out the fats, but I am going to do a little melt test and some Internet research before I make the first batch.

Based on flavor, I was thinking that they would make a killer ice cream sandwich with vanilla or lemon gelato between, but they are sort of hard, so I don’t think the structure of the cookie would be conducive to a sandwich. To bring them from delicious to amazing, I am considering the addition of lemon zest and/or almonds to enhance the flavor. I would really love to find a way to get them to fluff up more too, rather than spreading and crisping so much, so I will experiment with not pressing them, adding more baking soda, etc. but the science of baking is something I do not understand. To prove it, the following paragraph illustrates how I tried to use physics to solve a chemistry problem.

While trying to counteract the cookie’s tendency to flatten, I discovered a fun trick that circumvents the ice cream sandwich issue. I figured that if the cookies would have no room to spread out, then they might take the path of least resistance and rise, so I dropped a dozen dough balls into a cupcake pan. I should have figured that you can’t use force to coax dough into rising, since really it’s a chemical reaction issue. Rather than rise, they spread up the sides of the cups, resulting in flat-bottomed, bowl-shaped cookies, which would perfectly cradle a scoop of ice cream. Next time I am going to use a bigger ball of dough in the cup and see if can make a larger cookie cup. I love the happy accidents, and the cupcake pan cookies actually are a little fluffier and softer than the cookie sheet variety. Brute force and ignorance triumph again!