Sarah Kieffer Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer and author of three baking books, including my latest, “Snackable Bakes.” Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
We are taking a little break, so for today's show, we're dipping into the archives for my interview with cookie queen, Sarah Kieffer. Sarah's the author of four baking books, including “100 Cookies,” “Baking for the Holidays: 50+ Treats for a Festive Season,” and her latest, “100 Morning Treats,” which came out earlier this year. Sarah and I chat about holiday cookies, so if you're already thinking about your cookie game for this holiday season, you won't want to miss this episode.
Thank you to Plugra Premium European style butter for supporting today's show. I've been using Plugra Butter ever since my first baking job. My fellow bakers introduced me to Plugra as the butter to use and the one with the best flavor. It was also the butter that they used at home, which says a lot. Ever since then, I've relied on Plugra for all of my baking projects, like testing recipes for my cookbooks and my freelance recipe development work and trying the recipes we talk about here on the podcast. Everything from chocolate chip cookies to galettes, pound cake, hand pies, choux pastry, and blondies. The pastry chefs and bakers I interview all agree, and they're the best in the business, ingredients matter, and a quality butter is key to all of these baked goods. Plugra Premium European style butter is a great choice because it contains 82% butter fat. Also, it's slow churned, making it more pliable and easy to work with. My go-to are the unsalted sticks. I get to control the amount of salt in the recipes and the sticks are individually wrapped, which makes them easy to measure. If you don't have a scale, no problem. Sticks or solids, salted or unsalted, whichever you prefer, Plugra Premium European style butter is the perfect choice, from professional kitchens to your home kitchen. Ask for Plugra at your favorite grocery store or visit plugra.com for a store locator and recipes.
If you're going to be in New York on Saturday, November 11th, I'd love for you to join me at Cherry Bombe's Third Annual Cooks and Books conference at Ace Hotel Brooklyn. I'm moderating a live She's My Cherry Pie episode with three wonderful bakers and cookbook authors, Samantha Seneviratne, Rose Wild, and Yossy Arefi. We'll talk about their new books, their favorite bakes, and what they're making this holiday season. Following our panel, there's a special demo and talk with Abi Balingit of The Dusky Kitchen. Abi will be making the adobo chocolate chip cookies from her book “Mayumu.” Tickets for all sessions are $20 and on sale now. Check out cherrybombe.com for the full schedule.
Let's check in with today's guest. Sarah, I'm so thrilled to be talking with you on She's My Cherry Pie, and so excited to talk about cookies with you.
Sarah Kieffer:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
So the first thing I thought we would talk about is, I know you started a quest to make the perfect cookie at kind of a young age, and I know you've talked about it in “100 Cookies” in the intro, but I'd love you to unpack it a little bit now. Talk to us about that quest, when it happened, what went down, the whole shebang.
Sarah Kieffer:
Sure. So ninth grade was not a good year and I found myself just craving cookie dough all the time, which, that's a whole other podcast to unpack, but I would come home from school every day and just start baking cookies. I did love eating cookie dough, but I also loved the process of trying to make the perfect cookie. And so my mom never... She didn't like to bake or cook and she still doesn't, but she had three cookbooks, one which was a church cookbook that she used a lot, and so I would just go through that and find old recipes. At the time, I guess, they weren't old, they were current, and I just started baking through that trying to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. So I would do that every day after school. I would eat some, we'd give them to neighbors, my grandma came over a lot, so she'd always take cookies home and it just became an obsession trying to make the best chocolate chip cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know you've told the story before about how you'd been asked about making cookies, you said you could do it, and then things didn't work out, but I thought, do you remember what you did wrong because it's funny to think about Sarah Kieffer, like cookie queen, messing up a cookie. I would love to know what you didn't know then that, of course, you know now.
Sarah Kieffer:
Sure, and I still do mess up cookies, so please... I'm always messing things up in the kitchen, but that's how I learned so I've learned to embrace that. I don't know exactly what I did wrong. I can guess that at the time I did not understand... When I started baking cookies, we did not have a mixer. I was using a wooden spoon. It took forever to get it combined. But I feel like the mixer made me more lazy about needing to care about making sure everything was combined evenly. And so I think that was a piece of it. I'm guessing there was butter that just didn't get totally emulsified into the batter, and so there was streaks because they were just huge, all over the pan. I didn't weigh anything and at the time, every place I worked at, nobody was weighing anything, so there was that piece of things too, just throwing stuff in a bowl and hoping it works.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love learning, which I didn't know, that when you first started the blog, there was a little bit of sewing, there was a little bit of cooking, there was a little bit of baking. Like, it was a little more just a creatives blog as opposed to focused on being a baker.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. It was actually a different blog that is no longer on the internet, and I just needed an outlet when my kids were little. I kept baking and my husband was like, "We can't have all this food in our house. There's no one to eat it." And so a friend of mine has started a gardening blog. It was really big for everybody to just get a blogger.com blog and just put stuff out there, and she was doing a gardening blog, so I was like, maybe I'll just try something. And sewing blogs were really huge at the time, and I had never sewn, but I took some classes at a local sewing shop and I loved making something, but I hated sewing, so in the end it just wasn't a good fit.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love that. And then I know the blog became very successful, obviously, the Vanilla Bean blog, and lo and behold, over many years of, or whatever it was of blogging, there was this thing called the pan banging cookie that came to be and came to be associated with you. And I know a lot of people know about pan banging cookies, but for those that don't, can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with the idea, what it is and then what happened?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes. Okay, so first of all, lots of people tap the pan in the oven, so I don't in any way want to claim to have invented tapping a pan in the oven because a lot of people use that. I came about it organically. Again, in ninth grade, I was baking all these cookies and some of the recipes were not great. That's what I said, but now it could have been just my own not weighing flour and throwing stuff in a bowl. But I had these cookies that were just balls and they were not spreading. I got really frustrated and I hit the pan in the oven and it made these beautiful cracks on the top, and I remember being like, "Oh, I love how this looks." And so I just started doing that with cookies because I liked the cracks, and so I just incorporated that into my baking. I was always just hitting a pan when I made cookies.
And then I worked at a coffee shop when I was married, got married and I had a job working at a coffee shop, and I had come up with a cookie recipe that involved two taps in the oven, and so they had just a little bit of a ridge, it just was slowly starting, and then when I was writing my first cookbook, the Vanilla Bean baking book, I was trying to make this thin and crispy cookie and the cookies were just not working out, and I kept opening the oven and dropping the pan and it just kept making all these beautiful ridges and I was really intrigued by them. My husband loved them because he loves a good, crispy cookie, and he's like, "You have to put this in your book." And I was like, "I think people are going to be so annoyed about this."
But then Zoe Francois, who I was working with at the time on her Bread and Five book series, I helped on a photo shoot and I brought them in and she was like, "You have to put these in your book." So then I was like, "I guess I do." So I would only say the pan banging cookie that I make, the reason that it has this name is the technique is, you let the cookie bake for 10 minutes and then every two minutes, you open up, drop the pan until you get the amount of ridges you like or the cookie is done. And so that's what I would say would be the difference between tapping a pan, which I am not taking claim to, just FYI.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now I want to move into talking about some very general cookie making tips. Obviously every cookie is created differently, so we're going to talk about a little bit of some tips and tricks for putting together, I guess you'd call it like a drop cookie dough to start. The idea you're making the dough and you're plopping it down on the pan, and plopping is a technical term in case peeps do not know. Looking through “100 Cookies,” et cetera, there's definitely a Sarah technique, which is, you put your butter in your stand mixer, you're going to cream it for about a minute, then you're going to add your sugar and cream that for about two to three minutes. Is there a reason you can't just put sugar and butter together to start? I'm always looking for a teeny shortcut.
Sarah Kieffer:
You for sure can, but I have always been plagued by not creaming my butter enough in my early stages of baking, and so you'd have lumps of butter. Part of that is it was probably too cold, and I also grew up using margarine instead of butter, which is like a whole nother thing. But I would find lumps in my dough, and so I just want to give people the opportunity to really cream their butter, make sure that it is smooth before they add the sugar. I have a lot of people too who are beginner bakers, and I just found that step for me helped ensure that I don't have lumpy butter in my dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love a little insurance, always and forever. And I noticed that sometimes, and not always, but in a lot of cookies, there's both granulated sugar and brown sugar, and I'm sure people wonder why one does that. Are you only using brown sugar if we're going to go in a chocolate direction in your cookie, or will you use it anyway just because you like its molasses-ey vibes? What's the deal with two sugars?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I actually prefer granulated over brown in a lot of my cookies because I just like it adds a crispness, there's not as much molasses, which I'm not always a big fan of. A lot of people for the pan banging cookie recipe, it only has a little bit of brown sugar and people will swap out some granulated for the brown, but it makes it a little more chewy and it adds that deeper flavor, but I've always been just a pure granulated sugar purist. And I do play with the ratios when I'm coming up with the recipes because brown sugar is good and I do like brown sugar, but I usually tend to add a little more granulated than brown in my recipes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I did not know that about you. I'm putting that in my list of Sarah factoids. I also love... I'm embarrassed that I can't say this for a hundred percent sure, but I think almost all of the cookie, all of the 100 cookies, do not require a chill time. Can you walk us through? Is there a technique when you're developing a recipe if you do not want it to be a cookie that needs to be chilled, that you might incorporate to avoid that? And are you doing that kind of purposefully so people can make a cookie and eat a cookie?
Sarah Kieffer:
I don't have any problem with the refrigerated dough times. It does develop flavor. I think some people really like that. I've just always been like, I'm making cookies, I want to eat them now. Let's just do this. I've got two kids, they could care less if there's some more caramelly tones in their chocolate chip cookies.
Jessie Sheehan:
I totally hear you and feel you. And even though for the longest time I had turned into that person who thought if you wanted cookies, you would be able to eat them in 72 hours, so get ready, but I'm done. I want to make them and eat them. Maybe it's age.
Sarah Kieffer:
I feel that way too. It might be. Yeah, I don't have time to waste chilling my cookies.
Jessie Sheehan:
A hundred percent.
Sarah Kieffer:
And there are some cookies that do benefit from that, and I do. Sometimes I'll chill my brownie cookie dough just to get them a little more puffed or the crinkle cookie. It depends what kind of mood I'm in, but you don't have to do that. They still turn out well.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I was so impressed actually, specifically with the brown butter chocolate chip cookie in “100 Cookies” because I use a lot of melted butter in my cookies, and sometimes I use a little shortening as well to counteract the fact that often a melted cookie that wasn't creamed, et cetera, is going to spread more, so I was really impressed that you were able to make this cookie, have melted butter and not melted butter, and yet still didn't need a chill time and the cookies look beautiful in the photograph.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I didn't plan on that, but when I was testing recipes, it ended up being that way and I was like, "This is great."
Jessie Sheehan:
I love things like that. I also think, and it's like a little tip that I mentioned in “Snackable Bakes” that I think is probably contributing to why it works, because you're adding that melted brown butter to the room temperature butter, you're bringing down the temp of that melted butter right away, so there's no period of time where you're waiting for that butter to cool.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, and that's another thing I get impatient about, when you have to wait. Blondies are like that when you start them on the stove and you just have to wait and wait. And I have rushed it and put the chocolate chips in and they all melt and it's the worst. And I don't always learn my lesson. I still, every once in a while, I'm like, "Oh, it'll be fine." No, it's not.
Jessie Sheehan:
I do the same thing. I do the same thing, but at least I tried in “Snackable Bakes” to suggest to people like, when you're melting butter, always leave chunks in it so that stop melting it when you still see chunks because then you can whisk those in and bring it down quickly. So I loved seeing that tip. You're a big portion scoop person, as am I. And also, you mentioned a brand which I love, just so people can know. I don't know. Is it Vollrath? I wasn't sure.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes. Yeah, you can find them on Amazon. And I was just experimenting. I had so many cookie scoops break after three times, and I was so frustrated, and I finally found these disher scoops, so they're used a lot in cafeterias for scooping potato salad or whatever, but they've never broken on me in all my testing. I've had the same ones through all my books. They're the best.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's amazing. I also love this tip, which I actually remember being told when I was making cookies in a huge Hobart mixer in the bakery, but the tip about once you've finished with that paddle and you've mixed your dough, to always scrape the bottom of that Kitchen Aid bowl or whatever brand you're using because of that little nipple that... Can you tell people about that?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I've used several different mixers and they all, no matter how great they are, have that issue of just at the bottom of the bowl, there's just butter and sugar that did not get totally mixed. Even if I'm stopping and scraping and doing it, I always find something even at the end of the recipe. So I always make sure I have a really big spatula that I love, plastic spatula, and I just fold it over and over until it's all mixed in. So important that everything's combined.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, it's the worst when you're scooping out your cookie dough, then you get down to the bottom and you see there is all this good stuff that never got incorporated.
Sarah Kieffer:
And one thing, early on, even when I worked at the Blue Heron, I would notice I wouldn't mix it good enough, and so the top layer, there's too much flour, the middle is perfect, and then the bottom is runny, and you'd have these three different trays of cookies and like, "What happened?" And then, "Oh, duh."
Jessie Sheehan:
A hundred percent.
Sarah Kieffer:
I didn't mix it all the way. Yes. Yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
100%. Not everyone does this, but I'm a big cookie flattener, as I think you know. I saw that you gave me a little shout out in one of your recipes.
Sarah Kieffer:
Your peanut butter cookies are so good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you tell people about what both you and I do when we see a puffy cookie when it comes out of the oven?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes. And you have converted me to this. It was this recipe, I was like, "This is what I want to be doing from now on." But you take a spatula, you can grease it if you want so it doesn't stick, and you just press that puff down, makes a beautiful flat cookie with lots of cracks. I love it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Awesome. Yay. Because I know, I think before you used to do maybe a glass and a little piece of parchment?
Sarah Kieffer:
I would. Yeah. That was more for pressing cookies before they went in. I would just let them fall naturally, but I guess I love just hitting my baked cookies.
Jessie Sheehan:
As much as we can bang and hit, the happier we'll be. We'll be right back. Today's episode is presented by California Prunes. I'm a California Prunes fan when it comes to smart snacking and baking. First off, California Prunes are good for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. Prunes contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health, potassium to support heart health and vitamin K, copper and antioxidants to support healthy bones. And of course, prunes are a great addition to scones, cakes and crackers. Anything you are baking that calls for dried fruit, consider California Prunes.
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Kerry Diamond:
Hi everybody, I'm Kerry Diamond, the founder of Cherry Bombe, and the editor in chief of Cherry Bombe Magazine. If you are looking for the newest issue of Cherry Bombe, be sure to visit one of our amazing stockists. Cherry Bombe is carried by great bookstores, cafes, magazine shops, and culinary boutiques across the country and abroad. Places like Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, Good Cakes and Bakes in Detroit and Le Dix-Sept Patisserie in San Francisco. Visit cherrybombe.com for a stockist near you.
Jessie Sheehan:
I want to jump into a really great December holiday cookie, which is your cutout cookie. And first I thought we'd just go through the ingredients just because everybody's going to make a cutout in a different way. Flour, obviously. And I know you talk about your love of Gold Medal. Can you tell us why that's the flour you like to use?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I like their unbleached all-purpose flour. It has a medium for all-purpose flour protein count. A lot of people don't know this, but all flowers have different protein levels, so it does affect the outcome of your baked goods. After a lot of testing... I tried to find a brand that you can find in most grocery stores. I feel it's really important that people can have access to the ingredients I'm recommending, and overall, I just liked how my cookies turned out. I do also really unbleached flour over bleached. I feel like it's a little less fluffy in the outcome, and that's my personal preference. I like things a little less fluffy. But some people really like more of a fluffy texture, and so a bleached flour will give you a little bit more fluffy texture, but I've just stuck with the unbleached. I also went through the nineties, all the coffee shops were like, "You can't use bleached flour." So we all switched and then I just ended up loving it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Do you feel the same way about cake flour? Will you not use Swans Down because you don't want it to be bleached?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I don't like don't use the fluffy. Sometimes I'll add a little bit of cornstarch to help it be lighter, but not as much as recommended, so it's not actually fluffy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Got you. Got you. And then you say salt, but I was wondering, do you use kosher salt? Do you like table salt? Or do you just say salt because, really, anyone will work and you want to give people whatever they want to use they should use?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. I always have tested with table salt because again, I found most people, that's what they're using when they bake unless they are researching salt and they're like, "Oh, there's different kinds." I do use sea salt sometimes. I've used it interchangeably. I haven't noticed a big of a difference.
Jessie Sheehan:
There's baking powder in these cookies, which makes sense, these cutout cookies, there's also a little bit of soda. Can you tell us about that? Because I didn't see any kind of acidic ingredients that might call for the soda, and I wondered what your thinking was there.
Sarah Kieffer:
So soda can also neutralize flavor even if it's not contributing to rise, and it also contributes to browning. Which, I mean, there's nothing really acidic in these cookies, so it's not really causing browning here, but I like to use a little bit. I feel like it neutralizes the flavor a little bit, and I like the crumb that it also produces in cookies, so I use that. I've never really liked an all baking powder cookie. I like having a little bit of an open crumb, and so I always throw a little in.
Jessie Sheehan:
And this is a renegade, or that's probably the wrong word, a rebel ingredient, but talk to us about the little bit of oil that's in these cookies.
Sarah Kieffer:
So the oil helps crisp things up just a little bit, and I find it helps roll out the dough a little smoother. I feel like it just helps coat the dough and it rolls really nice, and so a little bit in there, and it helps it not to spread as much. Like, the cookie spread butter really spreads, so this kind of helps firm things up a little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then there's granulated sugar, which we already talked about your affection for it, and makes sense in a cutout. An egg plus a yolk. I like to use a lot of single yolks in my recipes too. Can you talk to us about what the yolk contributes to the cutout?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. I use it in a lot of cookies because it adds a little fudgy center, but this cookie, obviously you don't want that. I feel like it lends richness and also color, which... A lot of grocery store butters aren't beautifully yellow, so a little yolk sometimes adds a nice yellow hue.
Jessie Sheehan:
These cutouts have two glazes, both of them fascinating, so I can't wait to dig deep on them, but the first is called the simple glaze, and it has confectioner sugar, which most glazes do. I thought this was a cool ingredient, a little bit of melted butter, because it's not taking the place of water or milk, because you also have water in this recipe. Talk to me about the little bit of melted butter.
Sarah Kieffer:
I just think butter makes everything taste better. I use it in all my glazes. I just put a little bit in. I think it makes it a little shiny or gives it a crackly top, which I like. I don't always want that on a sugar cookie glaze, but I have to admit, I call myself a lazy glazer because I do not have patience making a royal icing and piping things beautifully, especially if I'm doing like a hundred Cookies at Christmas. I just want a simple glaze so I like ones that just pours off the cookie, it sets nice, you can walk away from it and you have a beautiful, Simply Glaze cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
It wouldn't add the same flavor, but do you think you could also... I'm just thinking that sometimes when I'll make a chocolate glaze, I'll add a little bit of either shortening or oil to help give it a glossiness. Do you think you could substitute oil here if you didn't want to use butter, let's say, or do you think it would get greasy and weird?
Sarah Kieffer:
It might. I haven't tried it. And a lot of times the shortening doesn't harden, so it might not. I found the butter does for me, so there might be that, but you could play... A little bit might be fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I get it. And then there's a little vanilla in the glaze and some food coloring if you want. And then I love this glaze too. You call it the freeze dried... Or it's more of a coating, but can you tell people about the freeze dried sugar coating?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, so a lot of people were doing this last holiday, I noticed a lot of magazines and stuff, but it's just freeze dried powder mixed with sugar. When the cookies are warm, coat it in there and it gives it this sparkly, beautiful hue.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, it's so simple. And you have to, of course, like the freeze dried flavor you're using on a cookie because some of the beautiful colors are like raspberry, so if you're not feeling like you want raspberry Christmas cookies, it might not be a good option, but they are very beautiful.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then just the tools for this. There's a bowl. Obviously you're going to be whisking your dry ingredients, you're whisking, you have your stand mixer, your paddle attachment. I know you have an affection for Nordic Ware half sheet pans. Is that fair to say?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes. Yeah, they are great medium weight sheet pans. They've held up for me for years. I do all my testing on them.
Jessie Sheehan:
And do you have a favorite rolling pin when you're rolling out cookies?
Sarah Kieffer:
I don't have a brand I love, but I look for ones I like that are the same length all the way across. I know there's, I think, the french pins that are tapered at the end, but I just prefer to have it all even because I'm trying so hard to get my dough even. It feels like it's helping me do that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Speaking of dough even, and I was going to ask this when we talked about the assembly, but do you like... I've never used one, but you know those tools you can buy, I don't even know exactly what it is, but it allows you to get the dough exactly one eighth of an inch or exactly one quarter of an inch? Have you ever looked into those?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I have some. I even wrote it in my notes here. They're plastic plexiglass rods. Thomas Keller's bakery book, he recommends using those and has a picture of them so I Googled around, like, "How do I get these?" And they do help, but they slide a lot, so that gets annoying. I will use them at the very end of rolling just to try to get everything really even, and it does help.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then I love this tool. You use a pancake turner, I think. Is that what it's called? A pancake turner as your spatula, is that right?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, you can use that. I like to find a big cookie spatula. A lot of them are so small. You want to make sure if, especially with an intricate shape, that you can actually get the whole thing so it doesn't break.
Jessie Sheehan:
Cookie spatula is just essentially almost like a fish spatula with no opening. So just...
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Describe it because I’m doing a bad job.
Sarah Kieffer:
Right. I know. I'm thinking, "Is that the correct name?" Because we'd use them all the time at bakeries and they have a wooden handle and they're metal and it's like a big rectangle that you use to get cookies off of trays. I'm guessing that's a cookie spatula. But I have several. I've just always had them and they work better than a plastic one, for sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
A hundred percent. Or a fish spatula, which does have the little openings. In terms of the assembly of these cutouts, so we're whisking our dry, we're creaming our butter, you're adding the oil and the sugar, and so the same thing we talked about earlier, you're going to cream your butter by itself for a little while just to make sure you got that, then you're adding your sugar, going about three to five minutes here, and you're only keeping it on medium on your stand mixer. Is it a bad idea for people to go higher than that? Will they speed things up if they go to medium high?
Sarah Kieffer:
I always like to keep it medium because sometimes when you crank it up to high, you're working so much extra air into the batter, sometimes it can be too much so I try to keep it at medium so people can just keep a better eye on. You want it creamed, you want to work air into the batter, but sometimes when you do that, it's just...
Jessie Sheehan:
You get too much.
Sarah Kieffer:
Too much. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, I got you. Then you're adding egg and yolk, vanilla, some flour. And again, I love, we talked about chilling already, but what I love about this recipe of yours is you can chill it now, take that dough, divide it maybe, stick it in your fridge for whenever you want to roll them out, or you can go right into rolling out immediately, which I think is brilliant, and I feel like it takes a step out of cutouts because often, there's the make the dough, rest the dough, roll the cookies, rest the dough, chill the dough. So talk to us. Was it just a surprise that it worked that way?
Sarah Kieffer:
Dorie Greenspan inspired me because she had, in one of her recent books, pie dough that she didn't chill first. She rolled it out and then chilled it. It's so annoying to take chilled dough out and then hit it or wait for it, and so I was like, "Yeah, I get impatient about that too." So I just tried it and it worked. It rolled out nice. You can use flour, it's not going to hurt the dough, you brush any excess off and then it just works. And so I loved that because I get so impatient with that step of having to chill the dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love that. So we talked about we want to roll this dough into about a eighth of an inch to a quarter inch, and then you're going to be stamping your cookie cutters.
Sarah Kieffer:
I have a hodgepodge of cookie cutters I've had forever. I like how metal cuts better because it's just got sharper, but they don't last as long because they tend to rust or just get, I feel like, gross faster, and maybe I'm just not taking good enough care of them. But I found, overall, especially with kids, like the plastic ones, you can throw them in the dishwasher and it's just easier, so I've collected more of those just because I want them to hold up longer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love my metal ones, but there's often a little seam that gets a little yucky and then even if you hand wash them, they can get a little rusty, so I feel you. And then these cookies, once you've stamped them and you've transferred the cutouts to a parchment lined baking sheet, you stick that in the fridge for about 15 minutes?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. You just want to chill it so the dough has a chance to just firm up and not spread as much in the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which is great. And then if you re-roll the scraps with this recipe, are you good to go or are they a little wonky?
Sarah Kieffer:
No, I prefer them actually re-rolled a lot, I realized, because they create flaky layers and some people don't like that because they're trying to make cutouts that are perfect, but I really like the flaky layers, so I'm all about re-rolling and re-rolling.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that.
Sarah Kieffer:
I feel like this dough doesn't get tough. I haven't felt like it's overworked, but it just creates nice layers of crispy flakiness.
Jessie Sheehan:
Awesome. I also love the way you do this in your books where you're giving people options for cookies about bake time because it's really true that there are those of us that like things maybe a little chewy or a little more under baked, softer, and then there's the crispy camp. So I love that you say you can do 12 minutes for soft and crispy and then you can go 14 to 16 for a really crispy cookie, so I love that you give both.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. I like mine crispy and I don't mind brown edges, but a lot of people want really pale cookies when they're frosting, so I wanted to make sure people could.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then the cookies come out of the oven and let's say we're doing that simple glaze. Easy, right? You just combine the ingredients. What's your technique for getting that glaze onto the cookies?
Sarah Kieffer:
I like to take a pie plate, put the glaze in there because it's got a shallow surface, easy for dipping, and then I just dip a cookie, let the glaze pour off back into the dish, and then set them on a wire rack to set.
Jessie Sheehan:
And do you put the wire rack on top of a baking sheet just to catch...
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes, it's lined with parchment so it's easy cleanup.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. And so there's no spreading. We don't need to pull out an offset because we just dipped.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, unless you were to make your... Because it does specify if you want a thicker icing, you can add more powdered sugar. So if you do prefer that, you can, of course, spread it on. I just like to dip and go.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I imagine a little more water if you wanted something a little bit more opaque, a little bit more see through?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
The freeze dried sugar food processor, what's the best way to get that sugar and those freeze dried berries combined?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I have a little mini food processor I feel like works great. I just do a cup at a time. Combine them till it's really ground, and then you can sift it if you want to get seeds out. You could do the berries first and then add it to the sugar to get the seeds out. Some people don't like the seeds, obviously, especially in the topping.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, makes sense. I was also looking at the lavender cookies in “100 Cookies” because they have this beautiful white chocolate creme fresh glaze. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I actually thought that would be beautiful on the cutouts. Do you agree?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes, that would work too. Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, tell us about that glaze.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. The creme fresh just adds a little tang and it's still really white, so you have this beautiful color. So it's not so sweet because oftentimes the powdered sugar glazes can be so sweet, so I do like to cut them with lemon juice or creme fresh works really great.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love that. There's also a blood orange glaze, so I'm imagining you could also tint this simple glaze in this recipe with a little citrus. The blood orange is so beautiful.
Sarah Kieffer:
It's so beautiful. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love that. Tell us about other ways that people could zhuzh these up. What other fun ways could people decorate those cutouts?
Sarah Kieffer:
Chocolate is always great, or white chocolate. A lot of people will put melted white or dark chocolate in a Ziploc bag, you just barely cut off the edge and you can pipe around the edge and add little sprinkles, which is really beautiful and simple, and then you don't have to go through the huge royal icing decorating things. Snowflakes work great with that, like cut out snowflakes. You can make them so beautiful. I'll do that sometimes. And everyone loves chocolate on cutout cookies.
Jessie Sheehan:
When you put the simple glaze on the cookies before it sets, would it make sense to sprinkle some sprinkles then?
Sarah Kieffer:
Oh, for sure. Yeah. You could do that. Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
That would be great. So I wanted to move on to crinkle cookies, which I'm hoping you'll describe for people just in case they can't envision them because maybe they even go by different names, I'm not sure. But what I love is you have a chocolate crinkle, which is in “100 Cookies,” and then you have a red velvet crinkle, which is in “Baking for the Holidays,” and it's fun to look at the differences in these recipes and then just teach peeps about a crinkle cookie. Could you just describe it in case people are like, "What's she talking about?"
Sarah Kieffer:
So the crinkle cookie is a very chocolatey cookie that has a good, fudgy kind of center, and then it's coated and powdered sugar so it looks like a snowy cookie. It's perfect for the holidays. And so this is another cookie I like to add the egg yolk to just to give it a really fudgy center. And then the red velvet ones has red food coloring in it. If you aren't into that, you could just make the regular chocolate version, but this just makes it red for Christmas, which a lot of people like.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which is nice. The other thing about crinkle cookies, which is pretty cool, so people can picture them, is, you douse them in confectioner sugar, as Sarah mentioned, and then as they bake, they crack, so you have parts of the cookie are white, and then parts of it you can see the crevices of the actual color of the cookie. In this particular recipe, we've got our flour, and then you're using a little powder and soda, which, here, makes sense because you want these cookies...
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, the lift. Yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. We have our granulated sugar, you have a little bit of light brown sugar. Do you like to use it when you're making a chocolate based cookie because of brown sugar's relationship with chocolate? Is that sort of where the thinking goes?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, it adds a little deeper flavor and it's more moist so the cookie will be a little fudgier.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, which I love. And then we have the egg and the yolk, a little bit of canola oil. Is this sort of the same... Talk to us about that. It might be the same reasoning with the cutouts, but just, I think people are often curious.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I feel like it helped keep them moist longer too because you really want them to have that fudgy center, and so I found adding a little bit. I do that in the brownie cookie too. It makes it a little chewier and just gives it that really tender center.
Jessie Sheehan:
When you talk about red velvet bakery emulsion, I'm not exactly sure what it is, I assume it's like red food coloring, but I know you can use either or. Can you tell us about that?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, so it just has a flavor that bakeries are known for, the red velvet flavor. And I don't even know how to describe it, which is not good, but it just adds this little flavor that I really like, some people do not like it and I don't even know what to compare it to except that it's red velvet.
Jessie Sheehan:
I got you.
Sarah Kieffer:
That's terrible.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can't we find it? No. I might just be in your head, so I feel like I understand exactly what you're saying, but can you tell us where we would find it? Is it just something you order online?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, I found it on Amazon and there's other places you can find it, and it's just called Red Velvet Bakery emulsion. It's really thick, so it really makes this red color.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's so cool.
Sarah Kieffer:
Which a lot of food colorings, unless you're using the gel, are thin, so it's not going to give you as bright of a color.
Jessie Sheehan:
And can you use it one for one with red food coloring and...
Sarah Kieffer:
I have, yeah. In this application, it was fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect. Perfect. And then there's some butter and then a little bit of melted chocolate in these cookies because there's definitely cocoa powder, but I assume the melted chocolate kind of just amps up and maybe fudges up the cookies a little bit.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, and it helps keep them moist too. It just adds that layer of fudginess.
Jessie Sheehan:
And it's fun because the recipes are similar, the red velvet and the chocolate, but they're different too. Obviously red velvet emulsion and the red velvet ones, and also a teeny bit less cocoa powder. I think it's a quarter cup in the red velvet ones and then a half cup in the chocolate ones for the cocoa powder. I always love finding the things that make one cookie different from another even though they're similar, and that was the...
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. And I have this problem. I'm never leaving a recipe alone, so I'm always just tinkering trying to make it perfect through the ages.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I imagine dropping the cocoa powder a little bit in the red velvet also will help that red color show.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, because my next question was going to be what kind of cocoa powder do you like? I love Dutch Process because I love that color. And I don't even want to use natural cocoa powder even when I'm making something red velvet, but I know that Dutch Process color is hard when it's having to compete with red food coloring.
Sarah Kieffer:
It is, but I like the flavor so much better too, I find, so I just use it. So I've switched to Ghirardelli Majestic and I've really liked that. I don't know if it's easy to find though in the grocery store. I think you have to order it online. But yeah, the special dark for grocery store shoppers
Jessie Sheehan:
Is amazing.
Sarah Kieffer:
It has a really great flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
It does, and a beautiful color. Most people think you take a crinkle cookie and then you just plop it in some confectioner sugar and put it on your sheet tray and bake them off, but you actually mix the confectioner sugar with granulated sugar. And I remember reading, maybe I learned it from you, that actually helps the powdered sugar adhere. Is that correct?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. And I think it was America's Test Kitchen, probably, came up with that first, as they always do. But yeah, it helps it stick, and I was like, "Oh." So I tried it and it worked great.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I've tried it too, and it worked great. Now the assembly for this one, I, of course, love because I'm like a one bowl baker since back in the day, and it's just as simple. There's no stand mixer here. It may not literally be one bowl, but it's essentially a couple of bowls, a whisk, you're melting the chocolate on the stove top. This one was a little different because it does have a long chill time. I think it said six hours in the fridge. Can you talk to us about that? What about this cookie needs that?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. I found adding the food coloring and just mixed with all the ingredients, it just baked better if it chilled.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Does the chocolate one need to be chilled too or no?
Sarah Kieffer:
It doesn't, but sometimes I do. It does make it a little puffier. They turn out great without it, but sometimes I'll just throw it in there to get that extra fudgy center.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to scoop the dough with our one and a half tablespoon portion. Again, back to those portion scoops. And I liked this. Yes, you did say, I think, for the chocolate one, if you're not giving those a rest, you said sometimes it can be helpful if you don't have the portion scoop to chill those for about 15 minutes before you're making your dough scoops, correct? Or you're portioning your dough, but without your cookie scoop, then let them chill briefly and then dump them in the confectioner sugar and granulated sugar, they'll be a little easier to work with. Is that right?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. The dough is sticky, otherwise it's going to get all over your hands. You will need to chill it a little bit, otherwise I just plop it from the scoop right into the sugar and then coat it or...
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. I love that. I'm always trying to come up with the right verb when I'm writing a recipe of what I'm doing, but it's like, "You're nudging your ball, you're nurturing your ball." I am never sure exactly what the verb is, but you're kind of like, "Just pushing it around very gently in its sugar mixture."
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wanted to talk about tips on mailing cookies. Since we're in the season when people are doing a lot of mailing, I would assume that the two cookies we discussed might be good for mailing, but I would like to hear a little bit more about that. And I also thought we can't not tell people about our mutual obsession with those homemade turtles. Tell peeps about what you and I love to put in our cookie boxes. I think it's a cookie ish.
Sarah Kieffer:
It is cookie ish, or candy at least.
Jessie Sheehan:
There you go.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yes. So they are the Rolo Turtles, which have been around for decades. But it is essentially a pretzel that you line a sheet pan with pretzels like the, not the sticks, what are they called? The twists?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Or they're the little flat ones. The little square flat ones are great, right?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. Oh yeah. I've never used those but that would work perfectly.
Jessie Sheehan:
They're perfect.
Sarah Kieffer:
And you put an unwrapped Rolo on top, put it in your oven for about five minutes just till the Rolo is soft, and then you press down with a toasted pecan half and then let them set, and they are so good and so simple, and it's always what people talk about in my cookie box, which kind of drives me crazy, but people love them.
Jessie Sheehan:
So funny. I love it. And that actually is a great addition to your cookie box, maybe for a little bit of filler or whatever between some other cookies because...
Sarah Kieffer:
It looks so pretty in there. The only thing is, sometimes the chocolate will gray on the Rolo. Have you noticed that?
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, yes.
Sarah Kieffer:
And I don't know what to do about that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Those are so good, I might have to make them today.
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know that the cookies for your box probably need to be sturdy. Are there some cookies that you absolutely would not put in a box versus some that are like, they're always in your box?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah. I always have cutout cookies and shortbread is great because that lasts for days too at room temperature. They're so good. People really want a pan banging cookie from me, so I will often do my ginger molasses pan banging cookies. But those taste best the day they're made so I'll sometimes chill that dough overnight, bake it off in the morning, and then get my boxes out to the neighbors. I also put a lot of bars in there because brownies or the coffee blonde brownies, stuff like that. You can make a tray of it and you've got a ton. It's so easy. So I put a lot of that in my box too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Those are the kinds of cookies you like to put in your cookie box. And then I think I read that you like to use a little bubble wrap, sometimes you're packing individually. Do you have some tips for peeps that maybe are putting those boxes into the mail?
Sarah Kieffer:
Yeah, a nice sturdy box is good, obviously. The pie boxes, those wood boxes, I feel like work really great. Keep everything in there, they even have their own lid, but I like those. And then, yeah, wraps and bubble wrap, stick a lot of it in there, and then a good sturdy box to mail.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much, Sarah, for chatting with me today about cookies, and I just wanted to let you know that you are my cherry pie.
Sarah Kieffer:
Oh, thank you. You're mine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, good. Happy holidays to you.
Sarah Kieffer:
Thank you. You too.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra Premium European style butter and California Prunes for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform, and tell your baking buddies about us. Be sure to check out our other episodes and get tips and tricks for making the most popular baked goods around, from birthday cake to biscuits to blondies. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of the Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at City Vox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.