The Great Cookie Research Project: The Mini One

Week 4 of the GCRP and I stayed with the popular crunchy theme from last week. I had previously made some nicely crunchy cookies for one of The Scientist's gaming jaunts from verybestbaking.com which also pandered to my quiet satisfaction in rolling and cutting biscuit dough. I was quite busy during the week and so made the dough on Sunday and left it in the fridge until Tuesday evening. This, as anyone who followed the New York Times's investigation into the best way to make a classic choc chip cookie a while back will know, is apparently de rigeur for good flavour and shape. I don't know if it made any difference in this case but it's nice to think that my colleagues were getting the best in cookie research and method :)


After the difficulties in rolling out choc chip studded dough last week I added chips to some of the dough before rolling, and stuck others in after they were rolled and cut. The former had chips more nicely embedded in them while the latter had more noticeable little pools of meltiness especially straight out of the oven. I was quite struck by the difference - I think I preferred the chips more thoroughly integrated, but it's just a matter of personal taste and the taste of the biscuit itself was more noticeable in the topped ones.


These cookies were also popular at work - almost as popular as last week's Double Choc. People commented that they were nice and shortbread-like, and not too sweet. The cutest comment was left by someone who wrote 'had 3 just to make sure' - but the three was written over a '2' where they had evidently gone back just for one more! The Scientist rated them an 8 while warm. The average was also a clear 8 which actually puts them in the front running so far, but the range was greater than last week's - a top of 10 (from a colleague who had dropped a blooper earlier in the day and so I think was feeling guilty) but a low of 6.

So, small and crunchy is still the definite preference among my colleagues. I have a few more big spready ones to try though, so we may be moving out of the comfort zone a while yet!

The Mini One: recipe here