Year: 2004

Recipe: Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ashley Bischoff8 Comments

The Dallas Camera Club meets twice a month and members take turns bringing in snacks (chosen by rotating through the membership list). Tuesday’s meeting was my turn to bring in snacks and so I decided to bake some cookies. Sure, some people just stop by Kroger and buy a box of cookies, but I figured that baked cookies would be much nicer.

I stopped by AllRecipes a few days ahead of time to select a recipe. Once in their Cookie section, I headed straight for the subsection on Chocolate Chip Cookies. It's not that I had ruled out other cookie types, but I thought I had a good chance of finding a workable chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Fortunately, all the recipes at AllRecipes are rated (on a scale of one to five). With dozens of chocolate chip cookie recipes, I just ignored all the non-5-star entries. And, I had in mind more of a soft cookie (rather than crunchy) and that further narrowed the playing field. And one that I finally settled on was called (simply) Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. In particular, the tagline sounded enticing: “Crisp edges, chewy middles”.

As the recipe called for chocolate chips (as you would expect) but also chopped walnuts, I thought I'd have to make a special trip to Super Target for sure. But, I glanced through my pantry beforehand and it turned out that I had all the ingredients already.

When it came time to bake the cookies, the recipe was actually a little easier than I expected. There was no melting of any kind (neither butter nor chocolate) and there're only three steps in total (the first of which is “preheat oven”, so that one hardly counts, even). The one nebulous portion of the recipe was the baking time — “Bake for about 10 minutes […] or until edges are nicely browned”. I don’t like guesswork when it comes to recipes and so I just went with an even 10-minutes for the first batch (well, actually 5 minutes + 5 minutes, as I swapped racks halfway through).

After that first batch, the edges were slightly browned, but who was I to say if that meant “nicely”? To be sure, I baked the second (and third) batches for 11 minutes (5 minutes + 6 minutes) and those were slightly more golden-brown around the edges.

Once they were baked, I set them aside on cooling racks and, as soon as they were cool enough not to burn my tongue, I snarfed one. It was still gooey, of course, but rather tasty. In some ways, it still even had that cookie-dough flavor (as opposed to most other recipes where the cooked product is decidedly different from the raw edition). But, I made a mental note that I'd have to allow them to cool fully before forming a final opinion.

So, the next day, I had one with breakfast (ooh, decadence) and it wasn’t quite the cookie that I recalled from the night before. It was soft, to be sure, but the edges never hardened. Really, it was just soft the whole way through — and some people like it that way, but not me. I wanted that delicate ying & yang of crispiness and softness, but to no avail. So, sure, these cookies are good in the general sense that all cookies are yummy, but I get the feeling that there may be a better chocolate chip cookie recipe out there.

In any case, here’s the recipe.

“Best Chocolate Chip Cookies”

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup white sugar [or Splenda, natch]
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons hot water
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350° F (175 degrees C).

  2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, chocolate chips, and nuts. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.

  3. Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned. [11 minutes was an improvement for me, and 12 minutes may be even better]

Killian’s is Teh Sux0rs

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

I went to see Bryan’s band (Bulletproof Lincoln) play last night. I got there after they had already started playing, but I still wanted to get a drink at the bar. I walked up to the bar and I glanced around for a line-up of bottled beers but I didn’t see one right away. And since I wanted to get back to the listening area, I figured that I should consider my draught options instead. They had, of course, all the usual Bad American Beers: Coors, Budweiser and so on. But, they also had Killian’s Irish Red.

And, contrary to its name, it’s not from Ireland at all — rather, it’s completely American and made by Coors. I was aware of the Coors connection but I recalled that Killian’s had at least somewhat-dark in color and I thought to myself, “Well, how bad could it be?”. So, ordered one and walked back to listen to the band. I took a few sips and soon discovered that it was not what I was hoping for. [Note to amateur copy editors: “not for what I was hoping”?]

The dark color (well, reddish, anyway) belied its true flavor — or lack thereof. If I was blindfolded, someone could have told me that I was drinking Just Another American Beer and I would have believed him. There wasn’t much flavor at all, other than the distinct wateriness. And there was an odd degree of carbonation — not a creamy effervescence like a good porter but a sharp sparkle more closely resembling a club soda.

A visit to RateBeer.com later that evening confirmed my suspicions. I looked up Killian’s and discovered that it has a score of 2.82/5.0 which puts it in the 28th percentile. To put that in perspective, I checked on RateBeer’s list of Top Accessible Beers. They define an “accessible beer” as those with over 500 ratings — in other words, beers that you'd have a pretty good chance of finding in a store.

And just because a beer is “accessible” doesn’t mean that it’s a bad beer, either. I mean, the top rated Accessible Beer is Ayinger’s Celebrator Doppelbock which is in the 100th percentile (obviously rounded to 100, but still). And even the 17th best Accessible Beer, Guinness Stout, is in the 77th percentile.

But I suppose that there are relatively few beers with that many ratings since the scores tend to trail off towards the bottom of the list. For instance, Sam’s Adams Boston Lager — an otherwise decent beer — clocks in at the 53rd percentile for the #22 spot. In fairness to Sam Adams, I don’t think it a bad beer at all, but in the spectrum of all beers produced worldwide, I can understand that it might be only slightly above average.

There’re 25 entries in RateBeer’s Top Accessible Beers list and Killian’s Irish Red squeaks in at the end. A few of the posted comments mirror my own feelings of this brew:

  • “Damn you rate beer, i used to honestly enjoy this, then you came into my life. I can no longer be content in my beer darkness now that you�ve shined your glorious light down upon my palate and shown me what beer can be. Pours a light ruby red with a thin clingy head. dead nose, smells blank. has a bitter tree bark flavor. overly bitter and got bad quick. […] ”

  • “This is what I would consider a middle of the road beer in everyway. The color a very nice red, but it cant hide its mass produced roots. […] ”

  • “Clear amber colour, the head quickly disappears, butter and grapefruit aroma, some malts, tart and sweet with a bubblegum-like finish — artificial and very forgettable.”

  • “Finish is lightly sweet, moderately bitter, slightly metallic. Light to medium body, watery texture, fizzy carbonation. I am amused by the fact that the label says "Manufactured", rather than brewed. […] ”

That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the band, but the Killian’s was a bit lacking. After a few subsequent sips I realized that the mildly non-badness of the beer wasn't outweighing the calories that came with it. So, after making it halfway through the glass, I just set it aside.

Work Overriding Blogging

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I’ve been busy with work and I haven’t been able to write as frequently as I’d like. So, I came up with this haiku which I hope conveys my situation:

Work is So Busy
This Project Is Due Monday
I Will Blog More Soon

Blood Sugar Levels Surge with Caffeine

Ashley Bischoff7 Comments

The other day at work, we got to talking about foods which promote fitness and Larry mentioned that he had read a new study about caffeine. He didn’t go into it much at the time, but I was curious since I gingerly sip caffeine every morning (tea — Earl Grey — hot). So, later that day, I went to see what I could find at the Health section of Google News.

Sure enough, researchers at Duke University did a study of caffeine’s effect on blood sugar levels. They tested 14 people with type 2 diabetes and discovered that large doses of caffeine can cause blood sugar levels to climb:

The study showed that caffeine had little effect on glucose and insulin levels during the fasting period, but it caused significant surges after eating a meal. People who received the 375-milligram dose of caffeine experienced a 21% larger increase in glucose levels and a 48% larger increase in insulin levels compared with those who took the placebo during the two hours following their meals.

“It seems that caffeine, by further impairing the metabolism of meals, is something diabetics ought to consider avoiding. Some people already watch their diet and exercise regularly,” says Lane. “Avoiding caffeine might be another way to better manage their disease. In fact, it’s possible that staying away from caffeine could provide bigger benefits altogether.” […]

It’s not that caffeine creates blood sugar, but it seems to aggravate blood sugar levels when consumed with a high-carbohydrate meal. So, I may be out of the woods on this one — I generally have a mid-carb breakfast of diced apples with cottage cheese (+ cinnamon + Splenda) but I drink my tea about an hour after I eat breakfast. With any luck, most of my breakfast-based blood sugars would have been metabolized by then.

Restaurants Urged to Disclose Trans Fat

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

The Center for Science in the Public Interest — a Washington-based think tank which focuses on food and nutrition — is urging the FDA to require restaurants to disclose the use of trans fats. I don’t always agree with the CSPI, but I’ll concede that they may be on point this time.

In case you’re not up to speed on trans fats, they’re a type of fat (like saturated fat or monounsaturated fat) but far worse than other types of fat since they not only raise your “bad” cholesterol but they also lower your “good ” cholesterol. They’re created by the hydrogenation of liquid oils (turning them solid) and commonly used by restaurants for frying.

The FDA is requiring food labels to include trans fat by 2006, but that still doesn’t help much with restaurants. And, as much as I respect a restaurant’s artistic license to design their menu as they like, I’m not sure that artistic license outweighs the health concerns in this case.

So, I think the CSPI may be on to something here. Then again, I don’t agree with everything they have to say. One of their side-projects is TransFreeAmeria, an effort to ban trans fat entirely. And, while trans fat is undeniably unhealthy, I still believe that people should have the choice to consume whatever they like, whether bad for them or otherwise.