The Ultimate Shortcut Cookie Book - Camilla V. Saulsbury [9]
Know Thy Oven
Whether used a little or a lot, it is worth taking a few minutes to familiarize yourself with your oven’s myriad functions. Some ovens have specialty features specific to baking, such as precision temperature settings and extra-large interior capacities that allow for multiple items baking at once, so take advantage of these for delicious baked results. Also, give the interior a good cleaning. This is especially important if you have no idea when it last got a thorough wipe-down or if you recently baked or roasted something particularly aromatic. Lingering odors or scents can alter the flavor and smell of your cookies and desserts.
The three most common types of baking ovens for the home kitchen are conventional (gas or electric), convection, and toaster.
CONVENTIONAL OVEN: This is the most common type of oven. All of the recipes in this book were tested using a standard, conventional oven. The heat source is located in the bottom of conventional ovens, allowing for the heat to rise up through the oven in a more or less even manner.
CONVECTION OVEN: By contrast, the heat source in a convection oven is located behind the oven wall. In addition, convection ovens have a fan that continuously circulates air through the oven cavity. When hot air is blowing onto food, as opposed to merely surrounding it (as in a conventional oven), the food tends to cook more quickly and evenly, ideal for baking perfect, evenly browned cookies. The circulating air may alter the amount of time needed for baking, so you may need to do a small experimental batch to get a sense of how to adjust the baking time.
TOASTER OVEN: I do not recommend baking any of the cookies or other desserts in this book in a toaster oven. The exception to this rule is the more recent combination toaster/convection ovens that have appeared on the market in the last few years. These ovens offer more even circulation of heat than traditional toaster ovens. Drop cookies are the best option for baking small batches of cookies in these ovens, but follow the manufacturer’s guidelines for adapting recipe baking times.
The Best Baking Investment You May Ever Make: An Oven Thermometer
If I could make a single plea to home bakers it would be this: buy an oven thermometer to check your oven temperature. Unless you have a state-of-the-art oven (and even then, temperature discrepancies can still occur), it is very likely that your oven temperature is inaccurate. It may be off as few as five degrees or as many as fifty degrees, but whatever the discrepancy, it will affect your results.
The good news is that an easy, inexpensive, readily available remedy exists: an oven thermometer. You can find this simple tool in the baking section of most supermarkets or superstores (e.g., Kmart, Target, and Wal-Mart), kitchen stores, and hardware stores (typically if they have a pots and pans section they will carry oven thermometers).
Simply place or attach the oven thermometer in your oven (see package instructions) and preheat. Once your oven indicates that it has reached the temperature setting, check your oven thermometer. If the oven temperature is higher on the thermometer than the setting you selected, you will need to set your oven that many degrees lower. For example, if the thermometer reads 375°F and you had set your oven for 350°F, you know that you will need to set your oven to 325° in the future for it to reach 350°F. Leave the oven thermometer in the oven and check it every time you preheat the oven to monitor temperature accuracy.
While few ovens are precise, most are consistent. That is, if it is 25° hotter than the selected temperature, it tends to stay 25° too hot all of the time. This may shift slightly at extremely high temperatures (exceeding 400°F). However, temperatures lower than 400°F are used for all of the baking recipes in this book.
MEASURING INGREDIENTS
Measuring Dry Ingredients
When measuring a dry ingredient such