Baking 5 cookies that get progressively harder part 1
From drop cookies to french palmiers, we're doing this thing!
I have to admit that recently, I’ve been avoiding the harder bakes. You know, stuff like macarons or pastries that require precision and patience. Quite frankly, I didn’t feel experienced enough to start, so I kept pushing it off.
But then I thought, “Anes, isn’t that the whole reason you started this thing—the whole premise of this newsletter?”
So here we are. I’m baking 5 cookies that get increasingly complex so that I can see how far I can go. I was really nervous to start this whole thing, almost scrapped the idea twice, but I decided that the most important thing is to give it a shot. So with that, let’s get into it!
The 5 Day Plan
Here’s what the plan looks like:
Day 1: Lemon-Turmeric Crinkle Cookies (Drop Cookies)
Day 2: Thrice-baked Rye Cookies (Shortbread)
Day 3: French Palmiers (Pastry-cookies)
Day 4: Neapolitan Checkerboard Cookies (Shaped Cookies)
Day 5: Chocolate Macarons (Because they’re hard lol)
I’ll be recapping days 1-3 in this post and days 4 & 5 next week so stay tuned!
Day 1: Lemon-Turmeric Crinkle Cookies
The challenge: I thought drop cookies would be a good start to test my basic cookie knowledge. Since this is a crinkle cookie, the real question is: Will it crinkle?
Most of the recipe was pretty straightforward, so here are a few notable moments:
Coating: After each cookie was coated with powdered sugar, the sugar started to “disappear” into the dough. So I coated them again AND sprinkled extra sugar on top before baking. Kind of extra, I know, but I really wanted the crinkles to show through!
Bake time: This part always gets me since recipes usually give a range of time. It’s really a matter of baking intuition and getting to know my oven, something that I’m still working on. But when I pulled these out, I noticed the tops were looking kinda dry—they were slightly overbaked!
Despite it being overdone, I was surprised to find that cookie was still light, pillowy, and almost cake-like. The lemon brightens it up and even though I couldn’t distinctly point out the turmeric, it gave a beautiful orange-red color inside.
Learnings & Takeaways
Cream cheese vs butter: This recipe only uses cream cheese and olive oil for fat. So I was curious. How does that change the cookie composition? Well butter contains at least 80% butterfat while cream cheese contains 33% with a ton more moisture. Using cream cheese gave this cookie an airy cake-like bite while the olive oil helps it spread in the oven—pretty cool!
Forgiving cookies: Drop cookies tend to be more “flexible” when baking thanks to their high moisture and fat content. There’s more room for error so I’m glad I started off with this one.
Day 1 was an overall success! I had a feeling that this recipe wouldn’t be fussy, but I also knew that the recipes would only get harder from here. Thankfully, these cookies gave me a little boost in confidence to take on the next round :)
Day 2: Thrice-baked Rye Cookies
Recipe from Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz
The challenge: I had this recipe bookmarked for later, but just never got around to it because the title, “thrice-baked”, intimidated me. I also had no idea what the texture or taste should be like from looking at the picture, so it was hard to grasp what I should be looking out for.
This dough took much longer to make than day 1, so here’s a few highlights from the process:
Uh oh, we got cracking: When rolling out the dough, I immediately noticed a huge crack along the edge. The recipe didn’t mention anything about this, so I took it into my own hands and squished it back together. I’m really glad I did because every inch of this dough ends up becoming a cookie—I didn’t want any cracked pieces!
Uneven slicing: Using a pastry dough cutter, I eyeballed the measurements and gave it a pretty rough slice. The shapes were all over the place! I also had to look up how to cut diamond shapes because my brain could NOT figure it out. Turns out it’s pretty simple: cut long vertical strips, and then diagonal strips at a slight angle.
It wasn’t so much about the slices having to be perfectly even; I was more worried about the awkwardly small pieces overbaking in the oven. Next time, I’ll either use a ruler to space out the cuts or just stick to rectangular shapes to make it easier.
Learnings & Takeaways
European butter: This recipe specifically calls for European butter (like Kerrygold), which is made from slightly fermented cream, giving it a nutty flavor. It also has more butterfat and less water than “normal” butter, which makes the cookies richer and flakier!
Boiled eggs you say? Yes, this recipe uses boiled instead of raw egg yolks. When mashed into flour, the boiled yolks prevent gluten formation, making it great for tender crumbs like biscuits, scones, and shortbreads.
These cookies were simply addicting. Thanks to the roasted flour and European butter, every bite just screamed buttery caramel, giving an almost brown butter flavor.
Although the execution wasn’t as easy breezy as day 1, these cookies were absolutely delicious and taught me patience. Even though they’re a bit finicky with all the going back and forth between the oven, I would 1000% make these again.
Day 3: French Palmiers
Recipe from Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz
The challenge: Rough puff pastry is a friendlier version of pâte feuilletée, the classic puff pastry. But there are still things that could go wrong: over-working the dough, uneven dough thickness, warm butter, and the list goes on. Puff pastry is a much more “delicate” and precise art, so this was definitely a level up from day 2.
Feeling the dough: The thing about rough puff pastry is that there is no exact measurement of water to use. It all depends on the type of flour, how old it is, how hydrated it is, etc. This was hard for me, considering the fact that it was only my second time making puff pastry. Following Claire Saffitz’s advice, I erred on the side of over-hydrating the dough.
Flouring absolutely everything: Last time, I didn’t sprinkle enough flour on my work surface so the dough was very stuck on the board. Having learned my lesson, I floured the dough, the board, and the rolling pin—I wasn’t taking any chances!
Learnings & Takeaways
Turbinado vs demerara sugar: I ran out of demerara while making the rye cookies, so I used turbinado instead. Demerara sugar crystals are slightly larger and turbinado has a stronger molasses flavor. You could totally use regular granulated sugar, but I personally wanted some crunch!
Warm butter: When shaping the dough, the butter started to melt in my hands. Should I have put it back in the fridge? Yes. But I was impatient and kept going which let the butter mix in with the dough, reducing the flakiness and crispiness. I noticed the inner curls were dense and chewy, probably a sign of melted butter and overworked dough. There was also some pooled butter during the bake, which means that the dough wasn’t chilled enough!
I was very pleased with the caramelization and the overall flaky texture—something I didn’t even know I was missing from only eating Costco palmiers! Although I need to work on the chewy texture, underbaked curls, and warm butter, we definitely had some wins from this bake too: the distinct flaky layers and delicious buttery flavor.
Day 3 definitely tested my baking intuition, but this was a clear improvement from my first time making puff pastry—that’s progress! I’m already thinking about making these again to share with my grandparents since I know they’ll love these crunchy pieces of goodness.
Final Thoughts
Before I started this challenge, my thoughts were smeared with fear and dread. But having gone through the process now, I’m much more energized about baking as a whole. I think more so than the becoming a better baker, I’m just glad I finally got to do the thing I’ve been pushing off for so long: the hard stuff.
And if I can get through this 5 day cookie challenge, it makes me think about other things that I’ve been delaying. To name just a few: finishing that knit cardigan I started last fall and getting a sports membership to start lap swimming! This challenge has given me an unexpected spark to try new things out of my “routine” and quite simply, it’s refreshing.
Next week, I’ll be sharing the last 2 days of the challenge, which had me in for an emotional RIDE (especially the macarons) so stay tuned! I hope that you have a wonderful week and I’ll chat with y’all soon :)
Warmly,
Anes