Tea and Cookies by Rick Rodgers Read Free Book Online

quickly in the oven.
    Before using, chop chocolate into small pieces with a serrated knife. The serrated knife grips the chocolate better than a straight-edged one, and you have less chance of cutting yourself. Do not chop chocolate in a food processor, as the friction can heat and melt the chocolate. And while it may be tempting to use chocolate chips to skip the chore of chopping the chocolate, the extra lecithin in the chips makes them difficult to melt. If you bake a lot and want to save time from chopping, look for chocolate callets or pistoles , small disks of chocolate made expressly for melting.
    In these recipes, chocolate is always combined with a warm ingredient (usually melted butter or cream) to melt it. This is less complicated than melting chocolate by itself, but it doesn’t mean that the baker can be careless. When chocolate is overheated, it thickens and becomes lumpy. Each recipe provides instructions to avoid overheating.
    C OCOA POWDER is pulverized, unsweetened cacao beans. N ATURAL COCOA POWDER , such as the familiar Hershey’s in the brown box, is the cocoa that Americans always baked with in the past because nothing else was readily available. It is acidic, and recipes that use it usually call for baking soda to neutralize it. D UTCH-PROCESSED COCOA has been treated with alkali to reduce its acidity and deepen its color (the procedure was invented in the Netherlands in the 1830s). If a recipe calls for Dutch-processed cocoa, it can be leavened with baking powder, as the acidity of the cocoa has been reduced so much that baking soda isn’t needed to neutralize it.
    Always use the cocoa called for in the recipe. When I am developing recipes with cocoa, I usually opt for natural cocoa for a traditional American flavor and Dutch-processed cocoa for darker color. I have used natural cocoa powder in most of the recipes in this book. In the cases where there is a choice between the two cocoas, I have recommended Dutch-processed cocoa for its coloring properties, but natural cocoa will work as well.
    VANILLA
    If you have ever wondered why vanilla is relatively expensive, consider this: The vanilla orchid, which only grows in tropical regions, must be hand-pollinated for commercial use, and the flower only opens one day a year. The good news for bakers is that vanilla is used in small amounts, so your investment lasts a long time.
    Vanilla beans and their seeds are often used to flavor custards, ice creams, sweet fillings, and desserts or their components, but the beans’ delicate aroma and flavor can be lost in cookie dough unless the baker uses an inordinate amount. Vanilla extract is the more effective and common way to infuse vanilla flavor into baked goods. Imitation vanilla extract (vanillin) is a by-product of paper manufacturing, reason enough not to use it. However, more than one taste panel has determined that there is little flavor difference between real and artificial vanilla. So, while I prefer to stick with the real thing, the choice is yours.
    High-quality vanilla extract often has its beans’ source on the label. Madagascar-Bourbon indicates that the beans come from two of the most highly regarded locations for vanilla plantations (Bourbon is the former name of the island of Réunion). Mexican vanilla is very similar in flavor. Tahitian vanilla has a distinctive, perfumed aroma. Again, although I like the full rounded flavor of Madagascar-Bourbon, there is room for personal preferences.
    FOOD COLORING
    A judicious drop of food coloring can give food an appetizing tint. The adage “we eat with our eyes” is true, and adjusting the color of macarons from beige to pale yellow makes them more attractive and sends a signal that the cookies will be lemon flavored. This is also the reason I’ve tinted my pistachio meringue cookies pastel green.
    Food coloring comes in three forms: gel, paste, and liquid. Gel, which gives deep, rich colors, is my favorite. It gives much brighter colors than