Old Colony History Museum whips up a batch of Toll House cookies
Kristina Fontes | The Taunton Daily GazetteIf we were to host a Great Old Colony Bake-Off, there would be no better treat to start with than the Toll House chocolate crunch cookie.
Taunton's Old Colony History Museum recently began its A Taste of Old Colony History series with the iconic Toll House recipe, and it was a sweet success.
Knowing my kitchen habits all too well, I knew I'd never be able to bake and follow along with the presentation, so the morning of, I went ahead and baked my own batch of Toll House chocolate crunch cookies.
The bottoms browned a little too much, but that's just a feature of me trying to bake cookies with our oven, so I've accepted such an outcome as inevitable in my kitchen.
Still, I couldn't have asked for a more delicious start to the day.
First, I gathered all of the ingredients together. I like to work "mise en place" — a French culinary technique that basically means "everything in its place," which not only sounds fancy, but also is just good common sense. Prep everything, whether you are cooking or baking.
I didn't have the amount of walnuts that the recipe calls for, but I used what I did have and that was fine. Sometimes you have to roll with the punches. I also almost exclusively use the King Arthur Baking Company's whole wheat flour, and this time was no exception. I usually get a slightly darker baked good as a result, but I'm also not too fussed about that.
If you want to be accurate, do everything in this recipe by hand. I must admit, in the interest of full disclosure, that I cut a few corners. I creamed the butter and sugars with a hand mixer, before doing all the rest by hand. Nobody's perfect.
There were a couple of unusual steps in this recipe, like adding the vanilla at the end.
However, the flavor balance tasted like it should have, so, whatever Ruth Wakefield's (the cookie's inventor) reasoning was for adding the vanilla last, she was right.
Ten minutes in the oven, and I had satisfyingly chewy, chocolatey cookies, with just a hint of a crunch.
This freed me up to just observe and enjoy watching other folks bake over Zoom, as the Old Colony History Museum hosted its first Taste of Old Colony History later that night.
Old Colony History Museum Community Programming Coordinator Saria Sweeney led the baking, as well as delivering a history lesson about the Toll House Inn and Wakefield's history with the inn and her iconic recipe. According to Sweeney, the cookie recipe likely was not an accident; Wakefield was tweaking her recipe for butterscotch cookies.
More: A Taste of Old Colony History: Bake historical recipes with Old Colony History Museum
Wakefield eventually wrote a cookbook, "Toll House Tried and True Recipes," which includes the recipe for her Toll House cookie.
During the presentation, Sweeney also discussed the more unusual steps of Wakefield's recipe, such as adding the vanilla last. Another was the instruction to dissolve the baking soda in hot water, before adding that to the dough.
According to a thread on the AskCulinary Reddit, dissolving the baking soda in water first is supposed to distribute it more evenly in the final mixture. So if any portion is undermixed, there isn't an unwelcome clump of baking soda waiting for an unsuspecting taste tester.
This recipe also says that it makes 100 cookies. At first, that seemed like a lot, given that the amount of dough seemed about standard for a cookie recipe.
Sweeney explained that the 1/2-teaspoon drop cookies that Wakefield made, were done using the 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon, which did indeed make for much smaller cookies. This would also make for crunchy cookies, which Sweeney demonstrated later was the case, the snap of the baked cookies loud and clear over Zoom.
Paul Hollywood himself would have approved of the snap.
Some participants, myself included, used kitchen teaspoons to measure out our dough, so the cookies we produced were larger and more chewy.
Either way, it's a win-win if the end result is a tasty chocolate chip cookie.
In addition to baked goods and a history lesson, there was plenty of fun, provided by Sweeney's excellent young assistant Olivia, a Great British Bakeoff-style countdown ("Bakers! You have five minutes!), a few surprise appearances by pets, and some heartwarming anecdotes from other guests via Zoom, about baking cookies with their families.
There were some interesting tips, too. One guest said that they like to freeze some of the prepared dough, and enjoy cookies one at a time later, cooking them up in a toaster oven.
If you missed out on this one, you'll have another chance soon to get A Taste of Old Colony History: the OCHM is planning to host one every fourth Thursday of the month, at 6:30 p.m.
Although the next recipe hasn't been officially decided, it might be whoopie pies.
For more information, or to register of a future event, visit eventbrite.com and search for Old Colony History Museum.
The Link LonkFebruary 04, 2021 at 05:03PM
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Making cookies the old-fashioned way with A Taste of Old Colony History - Fall River Herald News
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