You Must Bake the Cookie Pieces Along With the Cookies.
Southern chefs – or more specifically, southern eaters – have different opinions on many foods. Even if you don’t cook grains, fish, or beans, you probably have ideas about how they should be cooked. Cookies are especially good at causing controversy – even something as simple as a shape can cause friction.
The circle is traditional, but square biscuit proponents argue that right angles are less wasteful, as cutting the biscuits into circles results in waste, and reshaping those pieces can make them tough. But you don’t have to be wasteful or put up with tough, overworked dough. Just bake the scraps along with the rest of the cookies.
This tip comes from Atlanta-based food writer and cookie expert Erica Council, who tweeted a video a couple of years ago about a no-waste method for baking cookies. (I stumbled upon it while browsing the Garden & Gun website , a site I find quite reassuring.) The method is simple: Cut out the cookies as you normally would, but don’t throw away the scraps. Leave the excess dough in the pan and bake everything together. When the cookies have cooled down a bit, separate the scraps and eat them.
Grandma and Uncle Soveta used to bake cookies like that. “The adults got the real biscuits and the kids got the scraps, and we were fine with that, ” the Garden & Gun Council said , noting that the curved pieces of the scraps “make it much easier to soak up the leftover sausage sauce.” “.
If you’re worried about getting up, put those fears out of your mind. Not only has the Council “never seen this method prevent rising,” but storing dough scraps next to chopped cookies can actually help your cookies grow firm and tall. As Stella Parks of Serious Eats points out in her cookie recipe, “Cookies love to snuggle up together, so don’t worry if the pan is cramped; they will support each other in the oven, spreading less and rising more, for thick and tall cookies.”