Experiment Cookies - Don't Try At Home (I'm Serious)

You know, looking back, I should have known that a day when your cat leaves you a "present" of a dead sparrow on your doorstep, your cookies will not turn out well. That must be written down in a New England almanac somewhere.

For quite some time now I've been wanting to make cookies with silken tofu. Not because I think that cookies with butter are bad (um, have you READ the last few posts?) but because it's a commonly used butter/egg substitute in vegan cooking. And if baking with tofu was such an unworkable idea, then the bazillion vegan bakeries that exist in the world (and the million that exist in Brooklyn alone) wouldn't be able to stay in business. So somebody has to be doing it properly. Right?

Well. Funny you should ask.

I decided today would be a Silken Tofu Cookie Day. Specifically, a Peanut Butter Silken Tofu Cookie Day. Now, I have my own AMAZING peanut butter cookie recipe that I tweaked from a Gourmet one back in 2001. It has never produced anything but epic deliciousness, and is relatively healthy in that it uses natural peanut butter and whole wheat flour. It's a classic, tried and true, never deviate, BIBLE of peanut butter cookieness. So . . . I deviated. I took that recipe and sort of smashed it up against a tofu recipe I found online. The results?

Well. Funny you should ask.

It is perhaps significant that today is the 60th birthday of the DNA double helix. Like Crick and Watson before me, I have ventured into uncharted territory of genetic manipulation and experimentation. I'd like to think that they would salute me as a fellow pioneer. Do I think they would have a cookie to celebrate?

Well. Funny you should ask.

SILKEN TOFU EXPERIMENT COOKIES
or
PEANUT BUTTER TOFU COOKIES THAT DIDN'T TURN OUT PERFECTLY
or
PROOF THAT YOU SHOULD USE BUTTER WHEN MAKING COOKIES
or
YEAH IT SMELLS NICE IN THE KITCHEN BUT THE FIRE ALARM JUST WENT OFF

You know what, for brevity's sake, let go with

WHOLE WHEAT PEANUT BUTTER TOFU COOKIES

Deceptively OK looking . . .

INGREDIENTS

• 2 packages silken tofu 
• 16 oz. (standard size jar) all natural chunky peanut butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

In mixing bowl, beat silken tofu, peanut butter, and brown sugar on high until pale and fluffy. Add baking powder and salt. Add flour a bit at a time, beating after each addition.

Drop by heaped tablespoons onto parchment lined baking sheets and bake at 400 degrees about 20 minutes until browned on top.

BEETLE NOTES

YOU GUYS I HAVE SO MANY NOTES.

First off, the jury is still out (OUT? The jury is in FIJI) on these. Mum is truly going to earn her guinea pig stripes when she gets home. There is a 90% chance that this recipe is going to be scrapped.



Tofu and Peanut Butter and Sugar. Looks fine so far.

Starting out, there was no problem. The tofu and peanut butter came together really nicely, it smelled delicious and I was very optimistic that they would turn out, if not "classic" then at least "nice." The original recipe called for 1 3/4 cups flour, and I stopped there because that's what I've been doing for the last 12 years. But as I measured out the dough on the baking sheets, I realised that it was too wet. Even for cookie dough. So I scraped a few dollops back into the mixing bowl and added more flour, a 1/4 cup at a time. I did that three times until I got nervous and decided that the dough would just have to be wetter than normal.

Post the extra 3/4 cup flour.

Still, so far so good. The dough smelled properly peanut buttery, and yeah it was damp, but it was the right colour. I had no reason to fear. Yet.

Due to wetness, it was impossible to do the classic fork crosshatch on them.








Incidentally, this is what Wikipedia says about the crosshatch:

"The early peanut butter cookies were rolled thin and cut into shapes. They were also dropped and made into balls. They did not have fork marks. The first reference to the famous criss-cross marks created with fork tines was published in the Schenectady Gazette on July 1, 1932. The Peanut Butter Cookies recipe said "Shape into balls and after placing them on the cookie sheet, press each one down with a fork, first one way and then the other, so they look like squares on waffles." Pillsbury, one of the large flour producers, popularized the use of the fork in the 1930s. The Peanut Butter Balls recipe in the 1933 edition of Pillsbury's Balanced Recipes instructed the cook to press the cookies using fork tines. The 1932 or 1933 recipes do not explain why this advice is given, though: peanut butter cookie dough is dense, and without being pressed, it will not cook evenly. Using a fork to press the dough is a convenience; bakers can also use a cookie shovel."

 

 

So a) I need a cookie shovel, whatever that is and b) apparently there isn't some massive, secret, Illuminati-like reason behind the crosshatch. The whole inception of it was fairly benign and anticlimactic (Or at least anticlimactic in retrospect? You know that I mean - for something that's that ingrained in our baking culture, you'd expect that it would be a crazy complicated or cool historical reason. Like . . . I don't know . . . it was a secret Freemason code for "all clear" or part of the underground railroad or maybe even to indicate that the cookies weren't poisoned?!?!?)

 

THE POINT BEING. When have you ever considered making peanut butter cookies WITHOUT the crosshatch? Right? It's like wearing white below the waist before Memorial Day. You would never, in a million years, do it.

 

So I've decided that because these experiment cookies DID NOT have a crosshatch on them, they don't count as Peanut Butter cookies, or cookies at all. I can pretend they never happened, and it won't go on my permanent record. We good on this? Good. 

The cooking time immediately became an obvious problem. The tofu cookie recipe indicated 20-25 minutes at 325. After 25 minutes at 325 they were still totally undercooked. I ended up leaving them in, checking obsessively, about 40 minutes in total. (see increased cooking temp above) I left them in until they were firm to the touch and the tips were starting to brown. Maybe this was a good idea? Maybe it was bad. At this point it really had morphed into chemistry class. (Btw if chemistry class had included baking, I totally would have taken it. Instead, I fulfilled my "science requirement" with Astronomy and Oceanography. Raaah liberal arts.)

Finished "cookies" with brown tops. They look . . . I don't know.
They don't look like they'd kill a person. But they sure as hell don't look like peanut butter cookies.

So like I said. This recipe is NOT a keeper. Probably not even one of those that elicits a sympathetic, mandatory-because-I'm-your-mother "No, I sort of like them."

HOWEVER. TAKE HEART DEAR READER. Because proper old fashioned, chock full of butter and eggs CROSSHATCHED TO WITHIN AN INCH OF THEIR LIVES Peanut Butter Cookies are coming, and will be shared.

And in the end, I accomplished what I planned today. I baked with tofu.

I'll be eating tofu for dinner tonight.

With vegetables.

In a soup.

Not in a cookie.

And for the next two months, whenever I see a package of silken tofu, I'm going to turn around, head for the dairy section, and buy a stick of butter.

BEETLE LESSON OF THE DAY

USE THIS.

 



NOT THIS.