Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
Homemade cookies are as much a part of the season as Christmas trees and gift exchanges.
Mary Ann Esposito is the host of “Ciao Italia” on PBS, cooking up all sorts of goodies that share her Italian heritage. Cookies were of particular importance to her family, and her mother and grandmother started their holiday baking the day after Columbus Day. Because they were making about 20 different kinds of cookies, her family couldn’t wait until the last minute. Then a week before Christmas, the cookies were put in boxes.
“My dad would put them in the old blue station wagon, and he would drive them around and deliver them to people,” she said. “Fast forward, when I got married, I started this tradition all over again.”
Esposito shared her tips for baking perfect cookies with “The Epoch Times.”
“First of all, the big mistake people make is that they start with the wrong baking sheets,” she said. “Have you ever been there, when they ping in the oven and the end turns up? Those are cheap old sheets that don’t conduct heat very well.”
She prefers All-Clad baking sheets, which are heavy-duty stainless steel and hold heat well for even baking. She also relies on parchment paper.
“If I’m doing a rolled cookie, like a sugar cookie, where you have to put flour down on a board and then roll out, and you’re all upset because it’s all sticking everywhere — well, if you put the dough between two sheets of parchment paper and then roll over the paper with your rolling pin, you’re not going to have that problem,” Esposito said.
Make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. “Unless you’re doing some sort of a puff pastry, everything should be at room temperature,” she said. “The butter should be at room temperature, the flour at room temperature, the eggs at room temperature.”
Always use unsalted butter. “Unsalted butter is fresher butter, and in Italy, everyone uses unsalted butter,” Esposito said.
If the recipe calls for creaming together the butter and sugar, remember there’s difference between creaming and just mixing. “The word ‘creaming’ is really important when it comes to baking,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re baking cookies or you’re baking a cake. You need to cream the butter and the sugar until you cannot feel or hear any grittiness in the base of the bowl.”
A kitchen scale will help accurately measure ingredients and get consistent results.
“In Italy, of course, everything is measured b weight,” Esposito said. “We don’t do that here. It’s not in the American tradition to weigh anything. But if you really wanted to be accurate about how something was going to come out, then I would use a scale.”
When you’re done mixing and cleaning up, you might notice some ingredients still in the measuring cups. A simple trick will make sure you get every last drop.
“If you’re making a cookie that calls for something sticky, like molasses or maple syrup, what I do is I spray the measuring cup first [with cooking spray], or butter it first,” she said. “It’ll slip right out.”
The bottom line is that homemade cookies are true gifts from the heart. “They will go out to people who we love and admire or who’ve done us a favor, and that is a Christmas gift,” Esposito said.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice
