Saturday 4 October 2008

The Great Cookie Research Project: The Honey One

The Great Chocolate Chip Cookie Research Project has entered its second week and my colleagues are definitely entering into the spirit of the thing. I have been very tickled by the expressions of astonishment when people stumble on the plate of cookies in the kitchen, and they seem game for anything (luckily, since I don't feel I've hit any heights of cookie-baking yet).


This week I opted for a honey cookie, in honour of the Jewish New Year. I had read on Baking bites blog how honey is a good ingredient for keeping cookies fresh for longer, incidentally making it especially good for baked goods which are going to be shipped elsewhere. I tried out the recipe Nicole featured on her blog a few months ago using maple-flavoured syrup, which gave the cookies a lovely underlying taste. This time I used regular honey and got the same texture if not the same flavour. If I make them again I'll use the mapley syrup again, but I imagine that any strong-flavoured honey would be good too.


The cookies are quite cake-like - they stay quite thick as they bake, but don't have the spreading issue of some others I've tried. My Russianist colleague said that he wasn't so keen on the cakeiness, although he liked the flavour, and someone else said they weren't as good as last week's Classic. Another commentator (I let people comment unattended this time :) ) said that they held together nicely, and our hero administrator thought they were better than the ones from the canteen. On the whole they were popular but didn't rate as highly as last week - an average of 6.3. The Scientist again gave them an 8 straight from the oven. I asked him what would make them rate higher, and he said making them oatmeal and raisin instead :) I made some vegan ones of those last weekend when we had a lovely visit from Dogophile Vegan Nurse, so I don't feel bad for keeping on with the choc chip theme for now. I did like these cookies but they're definitely not in the crisp cookie camp. I think I might try going down that route next week - see if that hits the heights with the hard to please Russianist!

The Honey One - recipe here

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