Bittersweet (with Helen Zaltzman)

Summary

Home Cooking – "Bittersweet (with Helen Zaltzman)"

Episode 14 | December 16, 2020
Hosts: Samin Nosrat & Hrishikesh Hirway
Special Guest: Helen Zaltzman

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Episode Overview

The 14th—and final—episode of Home Cooking’s “Bittersweet” series is a joyous, nostalgic and slightly wistful celebration of cookies. Samin and Rishi answer listeners’ cookie queries, share family stories, offer gifting ideas, solve a decades-old recipe mystery, and welcome podcasting legend Helen Zaltzman for gingerbread tales. There’s plenty of laughter, wordplay, and heartfelt reflection on the role of food (especially cookies) in sustaining community and friendship, particularly through a trying year.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Cookie Nostalgia and The End of the Series

• The hosts reminisce about the show’s purpose and their bittersweet feelings about wrapping up:
  • “I don’t know that I could have made it through this year without you, without this show, without this connection to our audience.” – Samin (02:00)
• Cookie tins as an episode theme and symbol of friendship:
  • “I really wanted this as a gift of friendship to you.” – Samin (02:17)

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2. Signature Cookie Ideas

Listener Question: Sally wants a fun, festive, but not too labor-intensive signature cookie for a virtual holiday cookie party.

Discussion:

• Samin describes the “Baby Boo” – a tiny, labor-intensive, single-chocolate-chip cookie (03:41–06:00).
• For ease, both suggest slice-and-bake cookies.
  • Rishi recommends roasted pecan chocolate chip cookies (from Shirley Corriher’s recipe), mixing chopped and meal pecans for texture, rolled into logs, chilled, then sliced and baked (06:24–08:21).

3. Home Cook Gift Ideas

Listener Question: Gift recommendations for home cooks.

• Magic Unicorn Sea Salt from Beautiful Briny Sea
• Samin keeps a running list (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, artisan cheese, illustrated produce prints) and suggests checking their resources page (09:13–09:59).
• Cookie recommendations:
  • Samin: Pineapple Linzer cookies from Té Company in NYC (09:59–10:31).
  • Rishi: Mocha fudge chip cookies from Crumpet’s Bakeshop in LA (10:31–11:22).

4. The Great Cookie Tin Controversy – Mixing Flavors

• Pro Tip: Don’t store strongly-flavored cookies (gingerbread, peanut butter, etc.) together—flavors get muddled (11:44–14:42):
  • “Why are we not talking about this? Cookieboxcontro. Follow the money.” – Tim Mazaric (Instagram, read at 11:46)
  • Samin: “Please just gift one kind of cookie or from the same type of family.”
  • Rishi suggests using freezer bags to segregate types but commingle in the tin.

5. Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Redemption

Listener Question: Why all the hate for oatmeal raisin cookies, and how to make them better?

• Samin: “My solution is get other friends.” (15:16)
• Texture is often the dealbreaker; suggestions:
  • Toast or partially grind oats (for texture variation)
  • Try oatmeal raisin chocolate chip hybrids (15:45–16:34)
• General consensus: “Oatmeal cookies rule. End of debate.” – Rishi (16:34)

6. No-Bake Cookie Strategies

Listener Question: Recommendations for cookies without an oven.

• Samin jokes about eating cookie dough ball “as is” (17:09).
• Introduction to Preacher Cookies (no-bake chocolate-oatmeal-coconut cookies)—recipe troubleshooting from listener Alison:
  • Too sweet? Rishi reduced sugar, swapped some for brown sugar, and added salt and flaky sea salt post-formation (20:04–21:37).
  • Samin: Suggests increasing brown sugar, using nut butter for savoriness, and balancing sweetness with salt (21:15–22:21).

7. Salting Cookies: When and What Type?

Listener Question: Best salt for sprinkling on cookies—before or after baking?

• Consensus: Use good flaky salt (Maldon, Diamond Crystal) and typically salt after baking, while cookies are still hot for best texture and stick (23:08–25:59).
  • “I follow the existentialism of Jean Paul Saltre.” – Rishi, punning as ever (24:41)
• Don’t waste expensive salt pre-bake if it’ll dissolve and disappear.

8. Recipe Detective: The Lost Lemon Icebox Cookie

Listener Question: Katie from Brooklyn wants to recover a beloved lemon cookie recipe (from 1980s Gourmet).

• Samin contacts food-world insiders (Francis Lam, Dorie Greenspan, Xan Stewart) to track down the recipe’s print origins.
• Find: Tangy Lemon Cookies from Gourmet (Oct 1986).
• Samin tests and confirms the recipe, praising its strong lemon flavor (zest of 3 lemons, juice of 2) and caramelized ring (32:35–34:33).
  • “One of my pet peeves in a lemon dessert is when it’s not lemony enough.” – Samin (33:33)
• Recipe and original scan to be posted online.

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Guest Segment: Helen Zaltzman and the Art of Gingerbread

(37:46–44:47)

• Helen Zaltzman, podcaster, shares memories of rationed sugar, baking cookies from a Good Housekeeping book as a kid, and inventing “Gingerbread Day” in her shared house.
• On gingerbread decorating parties:
  • “My Twitter profile picture is from that very first gingerbread day.” – Helen (40:06)
• Elaborate gingerbread scenes (houses, crime scenes, Beyoncé in "Hold Up").
• Cookies as both creative and communal expression; tips include amping up spices and using fresh ginger and pepper for kick.

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Cookie Troubleshooting Lightning Round

(45:18–52:00)

• Cakey Cookies:
  • Too much egg or leavening, or possibly over-creaming dough (46:02–46:54).
• Paper-Thin, Spreading Cookies:
  • Oven temperature too low; butter/flour ratio off, or recipe designed to be thin (47:34–48:30).
• Turducken Cookie Problem:
  • Megan’s “cookie-cookie-cookie” experiment (chopped cookies in cookie dough, dough wrapped around another cookie dough) is bleeding together. Solution: Bake the inner cookie fully before enrobing (51:05–51:40).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “All my talent’s wasted.” – Rishi, after delivering a “shortbread” joke. (01:10)
• “I’m Samin Nosrat.”
  “And I’m Hrishikesh Hirway.”
  “And we’re home cooking.” (01:18–01:21)
• “If Katie thinks this might be the one, I can avoid donning my anti-arachnid personal protective gear.” – Xan Stewart, on recipe sleuthing (31:12)
• Helen on gingerbread: “My secret...is just adding about 60% more spice than the recipe calls for.” (41:25)
• “I can’t wait to see a picture of this.” – Samin, on Megan’s ambitious cookie monster creation (51:56)
• KitchenAid surprise:
  • Samin and the kitchen elves send Rishi a stand mixer (52:00–53:09)
  • “Did you know that Samin Nossrat is an anagram for minor Santas?” – Rishi (53:25)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Segment | |---------------|---------------------------| | 01:18–01:22 | Episode and series intro | | 02:27 | The cookie tin episode reveal | | 03:36–06:11 | Baby Boo cookies & signature cookie ideas | | 06:24–08:21 | Slice-and-bake (pecan chocolate chip) cookies | | 09:13–10:31 | Gift recommendations | | 11:46–14:42 | Cookie tin controversy, segregation advice | | 14:52–16:34 | Oatmeal raisin debate | | 16:41–18:25 | No-bake cookie troubleshooting | | 20:04–22:21 | Preacher cookie sugar reduction strategies | | 23:08–25:59 | Flaky salt and salting philosophy | | 26:10–34:40 | Recipe detective segment – lemon icebox cookies | | 37:46–44:47 | Helen Zaltzman guest interview | | 45:18–52:00 | Cookie troubleshooting lightning round | | 52:00–53:25 | Rishi’s surprise stand mixer/unwrapping | | 53:55-End | Goodbyes and credits |

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Language & Tone

The episode brims with warmth, wit (cookie puns galore), and practical wisdom. Samin and Rishi’s playful banter (“Jean Paul Saltre,” “minor Santas,” the endless teasing), a spirit of genuine inquiry, improvisation, and community support runs throughout — making kitchen experiments, cookie fails, and recipe detective work equally delightful.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Show

This episode is both a loving send-off and a holiday bake-along. It’s packed with specific cookie tips, stories of family, friendship, and food science, accessible recipes, and the kind of humor and heart that has carried the Home Cooking audience through uncertain times. Whether troubleshooting cookies, seeking out the best gift, or just in need of a reason to laugh, listeners find real connection and encouragement here.

Cookies, like podcasts and friendships, are best when shared.

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Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's Christopher Kimball from Milk Street Radio. Sounds like I'm bragging, and I am. We're the number one most downloaded food podcast in America. You know, Milk Street Radio travels the world in search of the very best food stories. You'll hear about smuggling eels on the black market, the secret intelligence of plants, and insider tips to eating in Paris. And every week, listeners call in with their toughest culinary mysteries. Discover a world of food stories by searching your podcast app for Mill Street Radio. Okay, so I get a call yesterday from Samin, and she says, I'm inscribing these books and someone has asked me for a short joke. So you called me.

[B]

Yeah. I was kind of surprised because there was, like, a lot of silence on the other end of the line. I was like, come on. Like, come on. And then you really delivered. Cause you were like, why did the cookie. Was it. Was it.

[A]

Why did the cookie write an iou?

[B]

Why did the cookie write an iou?

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because he was short on dough.

[A]

No.

[B]

What?

[A]

That's not the punchline. Because he was short bread.

[B]

Oh. Cause he was shortbread. Oh, my God.

[A]

Cause you needed a short joke as shortbread. All my talent's wasted.

[B]

I'm Samin Nosrat.

[A]

And I'm Hrishikesh Hirway.

[B]

And we're home cooking.

[A]

And Today is episode 14 of our four part series. The theme of the episode is cookies, and it's the final part of our four part series.

[B]

I'm so sad. I kind of can't actually fully process that our show is ending.

[A]

Are you really sad, though?

[B]

I think obviously people know that it's a shtick that I hate you.

[A]

I'm totally re editing that to make.

[B]

You say, obviously people know that I hate you. No, I am incredibly heartbroken. You know, the pandemic's not over.

[A]

Oh, but thank God 2020 is over. I feel like it's a good time wrap up our show too.

[B]

Yes. And I don't know that I could have made it through this year without you, without this show, without this connection to our audience.

[A]

Yeah, I feel the same way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If this is our last episode, I'm glad that we're going out on a sweet note.

[B]

Oh, no, you're starting early.

[A]

Does that count? I mean, I just meant it sincerely.

[B]

This whole cookie tin idea, like, I've had it for months. I was like, I really want to do a cookie tin episode. I want it to be all the cookies for Rishi. I really wanted this as a gift of friendship to you.

[A]

And I'm already making you regret it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, well, let's get started. Here's our first question.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

This is Sally from Berkeley. Growing up, my extended, extended family back in the Midwest always had a very large, very extravagant cookie party every December where we would all exchange cookies. And most of the attendees were so distant family that I don't even know their names. I just know them as like the person who brought the crescent cookies or the person who brought the chocolate covered pretzels for Covid. Obviously, the cookie party isn't happening, but a small part of the family is recreating it in a virtual format this year. So I need a signature cookie. Something that's fun and festive, but also not too much work. Thank you so much.

[B]

I love this question.

[A]

Right. The only thing I'm worried about a little bit is the not too much work.

[B]

Well, the only thing I'm worried about is that some Midwestern people think a chocolate covered pretzel is a cookie. I mean, I'm really into that, but come on, it's not a cookie.

[A]

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of signature cookie idea for Sally?

[B]

Okay. Unfortunately, the most ultimate, best signature holiday cookie I've ever experienced is called the baby Boo.

[A]

I love the. You've told me about the baby boos back before the days of this podcast.

[B]

Yes. Unfortunately, it does not fit her main requirement of being not super labor intensive, because they're, I think, the most labor intensive cookie I've ever seen in my life.

[A]

Okay, wait, explain what it is.

[B]

Okay. If you imagine a chocolate chip cookie that's exactly the size of as much cookie dough that it takes to surround one chocolate chip that is a baby boo.

[A]

I can't wait to have these someday.

[B]

It's amazing. The baby Boo is the brainchild of my friend and editor Emily Weinstein's father in law. I mean, I've never had cookie crisp cereal, but I imagine it's kind of like the experience of just eating cookie crisp cereal by a handful because you're just like, oh, I just ate a tiny cookie, but who cares? I can eat 30 more. Like, wait.

[A]

And so how do these get actually constructed?

[B]

Like a man, I believe in his 70s, painstakingly, by hand, digs out the chocolate chip cookie dough, which over the years he has, like, tinkered with, I believe, the Toll house recipe to his perfect proportions of, like, all of the different ingredients.

[A]

Does he make the dough with the chocolate chips in the dough and then pulls them out, or does he make the dough and separately he has the chocolate chips.

[B]

No, no, no, no. He makes chocolate chip cookie dough and then he uses, I think he uses like grapefruit spoons or like two tiny little teaspoons to like pull out an amount of dough. I mean, he's not that precise that he actually like really only pulls out one chocolate chip. But the ideal baby boo really is just one chocolate chip and the amount. Sometimes you get a baby boo that has two chocolate chips.

[A]

Got it, got it, got it.

[B]

But he has like, over the years, you know, his preferred cookie sheets, you know, which are like the specific ones that are not those other specific ones. I don't know.

[A]

Really detailed oriented information on this podcast.

[B]

Listen, I only visited once and I just. My eyeballs were falling out of my head. It was amazing. It was just the best thing I had ever seen in my whole life. There was too much information for me to absorb. It was too exciting.

[A]

Yeah, okay. But I think the principle that we can give to Sally here is make a chocolate chip cookie that is tiny. Just the tiniest chocolate chip cookie.

[B]

Yeah, I mean that would be amazing. But I also don't think that that's gonna fly. But I do have another idea because when I think of cookies that are not super labor, I think of slice and bake cookies.

[A]

I actually had an idea for what could be a signature cookie and it happens to be a slice and bake cookie.

[B]

Talk to me.

[A]

My friend, my mother in law's cookies, which are unbelievable. And she makes them every Christmas. And once she realized how much I love them, she started sending me tins of these cookies. She sent them for my birthday and then last year for Thanksgiving when they came to visit, I asked her if she would show me how to make them.

[B]

Tell me about them.

[A]

Okay, so they're roasted pecan chocolate chip cookies and they come from a recipe from Shirley Koraher.

[B]

Ugh. I love Shirley Coraher. Do you know anything about her background or should I tell the listeners a little bit about her?

[A]

I know that she's a scientist, which my mother in law also is.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

Which is part of the reason why I think she likes her.

[B]

And she's so funny. She has written two wonderful cookbooks that I know of. Cook wise and bakewise, they are written in her signature style of like really conversational, like explanatory sort of food science y kind of. And she's just so many things that I didn't understand, especially about baking. I've really come to understand because of Shirley. And so tell me more about this.

[A]

Recipe so you roast some pecans, which already, like the house, just smells great once you do that. But then you take some of them and you crush them into a meal to add to the dough. And then the rest of them you use as like bits along with the chocolate chips. And so the pecans in these two different forms really change the texture from a regular chocolate chip to this nutty, crunchy thing. It's so good. Oh. And then so as far as the slice and bake, you make the dough and then you roll it into logs like you were saying. And then you wrap the logs in plastic wrap and you refrigerate them from one to all the way up to 36 hours. And then you take them out and you cut them into half inch disks and then you bake them.

[B]

Oh, that sounds so good.

[A]

Yeah, it's one of the best homemade chocolate chip cookies I've ever had. So, Sally, I hope you try it.

[D]

Hi, Samin and Rishi.

[B]

As we come into the holiday season.

[C]

I wonder if you could make some recommendations for gifts for the home cooks in our lives.

[B]

I've already got unicorn salt on my.

[C]

List, but I'm looking for some more ideas.

[D]

Thank you.

[A]

Yes. Magic Unicorn sea salt.

[B]

You have anything that you're like, noticed this year that you really need for your kitchen?

[A]

Well, we talked about this with Stella. I still don't have a stand mixer. I've been doing all my baking.

[B]

Are you just saying this in hopes that, like some stand mixer company is going to send you a stand mixer?

[A]

I wasn't, but now that you mentioned it. Yes, yes, please. No, I still don't have a stand mixer. That's obviously not a gift that somebody's going to get me, but the Magic unicorn sea salt from Beautiful Briny Sea is so awesome. I love it so much. And yeah, that would be a good gift, but she's already got some. So what else?

[B]

Let me see. I have a little list here that I've been working on. Maybe we'll link to it on the episode notes. Yeah, but it's just a list of sort of some of my favorite food products and small producers things like really excellent balsamic vinegar, great olive oil, some of my, you know, favorite cheese. Like there's this illustrator who I love named Molly Reader who makes really beautiful watercolor illustrations of beans and all sorts of stuff. So every day or two days when I think of something, I go back and add it to that thread.

[A]

Oh, perfect.

[B]

And people have asked questions. So then I've been adding sort of ideas to It. But to be honest, a lot of the ideas for that thread have come from our resources page.

[A]

Yeah, we've got a bunch of this stuff on our website already.

[B]

Oh, actually, speaking of cookies, some of what I think are probably some of the most exquisite cookies that anybody can buy on the Internet or in person are from a little teeny tiny shop. It's a tea shop in the West Village in New York called Tay Company and they specialize in teas from Taiwan. And they make only one kind of cookie, these pineapple Linzer cookies. They are so exquisite and it would be an exquisite gift for somebody you like or yourself.

[A]

Wow. Well, if we're shouting out our favorite cookie makers that you can order from, let me give a shout out to Crumpet's Bakeshop.

[B]

Oh yeah, that's the cookie I just ate.

[A]

It's the cookie you just ate. The first time we ever hung out, I took you to Crumpet's Bakeshop.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And that led to the pop up magazine story that I did called Cookie Exploder about my favorite cookie in la, which was a mocha fudge chip cookie that Marian Marr, the baker of Crumpet's Bake Shop, created when she was the pastry chef at the Lyon Hotel. And you can actually order these cookies.

[B]

From her having just eaten one. They're like both soft and then they also have like a little like distinct pieces of chocolate in them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then they have this little coffee undertone. They're perfectly salty. They're so good.

[A]

They're so good.

[B]

Speaking of gifts, I know a popular gift is a cookie Tiny.

[A]

Uh huh. Yeah.

[B]

And I saw something that I felt was a really important cookie related point that we had to discuss today. Okay, please click this link. It's a link to my friend Tim's Instagram. It's a picture he recently posted of some very beautiful ginger cookies.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Would you read this caption aloud?

[A]

Okay, so this is from Tim Mazaric. It is time to start thinking about holiday cookie platters, people. Why, when people publish guides to putting together cookie tins, See Melissa Clark in the New York Times yesterday. Do we never talk about how if you store a bunch of different kinds of cookies together, they will end up tasting bad? The flavors get all muddled. You can't store gingerbread, shortbread chocolate cookies all in the same box. This is why I never order any of these fancy boxes of assorted pastry chef cookies. They don't taste good. Someone just needs to put a peanut butter cookie into that thing. And the whole Lot of them are ruined. Why are we not talking about this? Cookieboxcontro. Follow the money.

[B]

Oh, look, even Dori Greenspan weighed in. She says, just yesterday, I told a friend not to pack her gingerbread cookies with her plain butter cookies. Really?

[A]

Wow. Once again, we're leaning into Samin's pro segregationist views, and she's saying, do not intermingle your different kinds of cookies.

[B]

Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you're, like, you're an intermingler? You want to have your, like, rum ball next to your. You like it when, like, all the.

[A]

Things touch a cookie miscegnist?

[B]

Yeah. Is that what you're saying? You seem, of all of the people, like you would be the ultimate purist.

[A]

So I get the Christmas cookie tin from my mother in law from Dr. M that has all of the roasted pecan chocolate chip cookies, but there's only one type of cookie that does not count. The only other cookie tin that I'm familiar with is the cookie tin that all immigrant families, I think, in America are familiar with.

[B]

Oh, the Danish butter cookie tin royal dance.

[A]

And then the real key is then you keep the royal dance box.

[B]

And then, like, the child gets to the grandma's house and is so excited for the cookies, and it opens, and it has, like, a sewing kit or receipts in it.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

And it's just, like, disappointment. And then I would just, like, keep, like, a stupid person hopefully opening it.

[A]

Just like, being like, maybe there'll be.

[B]

Cookies in it this time. Yeah, but those are all butter cookies.

[A]

There's the rectangular one.

[B]

There's one with a jam thumbprint, but it's still a butter cookie.

[A]

Yeah, I see.

[B]

But what I'm saying is, like, if you're gonna gift, please just gift one kind of cookie or from the same type of family. Like, many gingers, many butters, many chocolates.

[A]

All right, what if you were to put all your different types of cookies, the individual types of cookies, in freezer bags? Because I don't want you to be. I don't want us to be dissuading people from making a diverse range of cookies.

[B]

No, I just want you to be thoughtful about the spice interchange in the air.

[A]

Right? So please, folks, if you're including different types of cookies within one tin, segregate them by type, but then they can commingle within the tin.

[B]

This will also help keep them fresher, frankly.

[A]

That's true. On the topic of broadening the horizons of your cookies, here's a question we got from Haley.

[C]

Why does everyone hate oatmeal raisins so much. And if you were going to do it differently, how would you do it?

[B]

I love it.

[C]

I find them very comforting. But if you wanted to share your love of oatmeal cookies, how would you.

[B]

Do that without the raisins?

[C]

How do you make this cookie more exciting for people?

[B]

I mean, I have an answer. I feel like you definitely have an opinion.

[A]

Oh, sure. Yeah. My solution is get other friends.

[E]

Who.

[A]

Hates on an oatmeal raisin cookie.

[B]

No, a lot of people hate oatmeal raisin cookie.

[A]

Yeah, I'm glad I don't know them.

[B]

I'm not one of them, but I fully get it because it's like, why would you choose oatmeal raisin when you could choose a chocolate chip?

[A]

Well, we've discussed my best cookie that I think I've ever made, which is an oatmeal cookie that has both raisins and chocolate chips in it.

[B]

No, I agree. I enjoy oatmeal raisin chocolate chip as well. And I cannot remember if this is a Stella Parks trick or if it's a trick that comes from somewhere else. But I've heard of things where sometimes people toast the oats a little bit in advance, or they might take some portion of the oats, not all of them, but some portion of the oats, and grind them up so that you are changing the texture of the whole cookie so that there's not just like only that, like, whole oat texture. Because I do think some part of the like dislike has to do with the texture for people. But I do think they're very homey tasting. It's that cinnamony, you know, apple pie kind of like, cozy feeling. And I agree. I think a nice, like, chewy oatmeal raisin cookie is definitely a cozy thing.

[A]

Oatmeal cookies rule. End of debate. That brings us to our next question. Actually, it's kind of a set of questions.

[B]

Okay. Hello, Rishi and Samin.

[C]

This is Sarah calling from Seattle. My oven is currently broken, and while I wait for the new heating element to come in the mail, I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for cookie recipes that don't require any baking.

[B]

Well, I mean, if you ask me, the answer to this question is you could do what I. You could do what I do, which is just make the cookie and even roll out the balls with, like, the full intention of baking them and then even freeze them. Freeze the cookie dough balls. And then just like, one by one, pull them out of the freezer and be like just gonna eat it.

[A]

So just make cookies and just omit the step where you bake them.

[B]

Yeah, just do that.

[A]

That's a no bake cookie recipe. That's true.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Honestly, I had never actually heard of a no bake cook cookie before we started this podcast. But when we got this question from Sarah, I did have an idea in mind because of a question that we got way back in August. This is from Alison and I'm sorry, Allison, that it took us this long to get to it, but I'm just gonna read the email because there's no audio attached. Hi Samin and Rishi. My family loves preacher cookies, AKA no bake cookies, but they are too sweet. And obviously because there's a lot of sugar for both health and taste reasons, I'd like to make these cookies with less sugar, but it feels risky to mess around with the recip since I don't want to waste ingredients or ruin the sacred cookie. We use the recipe my grandma wrote down on an index card 20 plus years ago that is stained and now preserved in a plastic baggie. My main concern is that if I reduce the sugar, it'll change the texture of the cookie, which would not be good. How much sugar could I reasonably take out and not immediately have a cookie failure?

[B]

Oh, this is a question for Shirley Koraher.

[A]

And how would it change the cookie other than making it less sweet? The recipe is below for reference.

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

Two cups sugar, one stick butter, half a cup of milk, two cups of oats, one cup of coconut, unsweetened, half a cup of cocoa powder and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. You combine the sugar, butter and milk in a saucepan, bring it to boil, cook it for three minutes, then you add the other ingredients, dollop onto a parchment lined baking sheet and let. I love this. Let set as long as you can wait. And she also says also, if you're wondering about the name, the story goes that back in the day, if the preacher came to pay an unexpected visit, you could spot him coming down the road and have these whipped up before he makes it inside.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

Yeah. So I got really excited about this and I wanted to try and see if I could solve this for Alison.

[B]

You, chef detective.

[A]

Have you ever heard of preacher cookies before?

[B]

I've never heard that name, but once you read the recipe, I realized I have encountered something like this. Oh, it definitely feels very 1980s and before.

[A]

Interesting. Yeah. I'd never heard of these, I'd never tasted them. And so I went into this sort of with the advantage, slash, disadvantage of having no frame of reference, but they're too sweet as is. So what can I do to make something that's tasty but changes it up a little bit? I will say my variation is still very sweet, but I don't really have that much of a problem with it. But I would not say they are too sweet.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I just changed things a little bit. 2 cups of sugar is a lot of sugar.

[B]

That's a lot of sugar.

[A]

Yeah. So what I did was I changed it to one and a quarter cup of sugar and added half a cup of brown sugar.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Are you. Do you disagree with me?

[B]

So I wouldn't say that, like, quantitatively, I wouldn't say it's any less sweet. But what I'll say about brown sugar, because, you know, the brown sugar, like, if you buy it at the store, it's just white sugar with some other stuff added back in.

[A]

It just has molasses.

[B]

It has some molasses added back in. So it's not any less sweet. It's just that it has other stuff that you're tasting to balance it out. So it can taste more balanced and more even. And that's why maybe what you feel is that it's less sweet, but it's not any less sweet. But what it is, and I think you're on the right track, is that it's much moister and it's much wetter. But I was like, oh, what if we went even bolder and did a larger switch and cut out all the white sugar and reduced even a larger percentage and just made all of what we kept brown?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because then we could cut out more and what we kept would be moister, you know?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Allison, if you taste this and you like it, if you like Rishi's version and you want to push even farther, I'd say go harder and, like, take out more white sugar and go even browner.

[A]

And also for the sake of balance, I added half a teaspoon of kosher salt. And then the other thing was, at the end, after you're doing your dollop of your cookies, I added some flaky sea salt.

[B]

Ooh.

[A]

And again, not knowing how these are supposed to taste, to me, they tasted great. And especially considering the amount of effort that went into them, which was really not that much.

[B]

They look awesome.

[A]

They kind of remind me of a Samoa. My favorite Girl Scout cookie.

[B]

One thought I have, which definitely would take things in another direction.

[A]

You keep talking. I'm just gonna eat this One that I made.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, you keep eating and I'll keep talking. I also wonder what would happen if you added or maybe instead of some of the butter, if you used nut butter, like whether it's almond butter or peanut butter, you know, some savoriness kind of could in that same way do something to balance out some of that sugar. That's a thought I had.

[A]

The little bit of saltiness from the flaky sea salt really does help balance the thing out. And that brings me to the third of this triple decker sandwich of questions.

[B]

Triple decker sandwich cookie.

[A]

This comes from Mira.

[B]

My question is about chocolate chip cookies and salt. I was wondering what the best salt is to sprinkle on top of cookies and whether you'd recommend doing this before or after they come out of the oven. Thanks so much. Oh.

[A]

What do you think? What's your salt philosophy?

[B]

I definitely am a post baking salter. I think it depends what you're baking. But for a chocolate chip cookie, maybe I'm a pre baking salter. Actually. I don't know that I have the strongest feelings about this.

[A]

You came out of the gate so I know confident.

[B]

I feel like, I feel like I'm supposed to have really strong feelings about stuff. About salt anyway. Yeah, shoot. Okay. What I will say is a really nice salt to put on top is a flaky salt. And when we say flaky salts in general, we're talking about the fancy salt that you buy and they're made according to like a very slow method where the water is evaporated and what's left are these really delicate sort of pyramid shaped flakes that when they land on your tongue dissolve with this like incredibly light crunch. And so they're really delightful to experience on the top of your cookie or brownie or baked good. And what that's all about is the texture.

[A]

Right.

[B]

If that is outside of your price range, which totally understandable. The next thing down is, I would recommend diamond crystal kosher salt, which is the kosher salt that comes in the red box, which is kind of like one of my everyday salts. And it's very light and flaky on a much smaller scale and also really nice to sprinkle, but you don't get quite as much of a distinct crunch. What's your go to sprinkle salt rish?

[A]

I use the Maldon sea salt as far as salt philosophy in terms of when, before, after. Yeah, yeah. I follow the existentialism of Jean Paul Saltre.

[B]

Oh no.

[A]

But I believe in salting after they come out of the oven.

[B]

Well, okay. The thing about it is, sometimes I put the salt on before. Depends on what the texture of the thing I'm sprinkling it onto is. So if the salt's not gonna dissolve, like, say, brownie batter, if I'm gonna put this salt on top of brownie batter, it's gonna dissolve into the brownies and go, bye, bye. And so my expensive salt will just make some salty topped brownies where I don't get any crunch.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so I wouldn't do that. I would immediately salt the brownies the second they come out of the oven.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Or if I'm real feeling real spicy, I might open the oven halfway through the baking once the brownies have really set on top, and salt them at that point just to make sure that the salt's not gonna go inside and dissolve into the brownies.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And same thing with the cookies. I might wait until they've, like, started to form and started to set, you know, form a skin and then salt. Or I might just do it the second they come out of the oven. I don't want to wait too much longer after that, because sometimes if you wait too long, then you're just salting it and the salt will fall off.

[A]

That's the real crucial thing, is you got to do it right after it comes out while it's still setting. Otherwise it just falls off. And, you know, then you just get a salty tin.

[B]

Yeah. And then you just wasted your expensive salt.

[A]

All right, we got a question from Katie, a chef detective question. I'm going to play it here. I've already shared it with Samin so she could get ready for it.

[D]

This is Katie calling from Brooklyn. I'm not going to be able to make it home to my parents place in Canada for Christmas this year because of COVID And I know my mom is really super sad. So I had this great idea that I would enlist chef detective's help to try to uncover a cookie recipe that was so beloved in our family, but that we lost about 10 years ago. My mom clipped this recipe from gourmet magazine sometime in the 80s, and it was called lemon icebox cookies. She used to make up the dough. It kind of looked like a sugar cookie dough. It was a sort of buttery yellow sweet with sort of a lemony tanginess. She would roll it up in a cylinder in wax paper, throw it in the fridge for a day, and then cut it up into discs, bake them in the oven, and they would come out to be these incredibly delicious lemony cookies about 3 inches in diameter with a kind of caramelized brown ring around the edge. And the surface would be sort of bubbled, just like a pancake. They're not too thick. They're not cakey when you bite into them. They're more sort of chewy. And they were topped with some icing sugar. They were really so tasty. And my mom loved these cookies more than anything. And I just think she would completely freak if I were to find this recipe or at least something comparable. We've never been able to find something that compared. Happy holidays, y'.

[B]

All.

[D]

I super love your show.

[A]

What have you got?

[B]

When you forwarded me this email, I was really excited because I knew immediately I was like, okay, I have to get in touch with some old time gourmet people from Gourmet Magazine.

[A]

Oh, oh, I see, like, people who worked at Gourmet. Not like O L D E People who dress up in costume from colonial times.

[B]

Not like Renaissance fair old timey chefs.

[A]

It's not like, tell me about churning butter.

[B]

No. Because I don't know if you know this, but Gourmet Magazine is no longer in existence, very sadly.

[A]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[B]

So, like, you have to track down the people who used to work there.

[A]

Wait, so you actually went to the recipe's original source?

[B]

I was like, how do I find the people who worked in Gourmet Magazine and would know about this?

[A]

Wow.

[B]

That was what I wanted to do.

[A]

Awesome.

[B]

But I didn't know exactly who those people would be. So the first person who came to mind was my friend Francis Lam, who hosts the Splendid Table podcast. Cause he is probably my closest friend who actually worked at Gourmet magazine.

[A]

Oh, cool.

[B]

And he listed a bunch of people. He's like, oh, you could email Dory Greenspan, or I could try and put you in touch with some of the test kitchen people. And so then when he said Dory, I said, oh, of course. Because Dory is a legend and she's also my colleague. So. And I felt really comfortable writing her. Okay. So Dory immediately writes back, hi, And I love the way Kate described the cookies. Sign this woman up for headnote writing. Which is true.

[A]

Will you explain what a headnote is?

[B]

Oh, a headnote is in a recipe. The little paragraph at the top of the recipe that describes the recipe before you make it. So that kind of once. It kind of entices you into making the cookie or whatever. So that. And I have to say, Kate did such a great job of describing these cookies. I got a really clear picture of what this cookie was like from her description.

[A]

For a dame who's walking into the detective's office, she gave you a lot of leads to go on.

[B]

She really did.

[A]

Can I say dame? Is that okay?

[B]

You can say that.

[A]

All right.

[B]

So then Dory goes on. She says, I don't know the cookies, but I think Zan Stewart would. Xan was at Gourmet for just shy of 100 years.

[A]

And do you know who that person is?

[B]

I don't know who Xan is. And she says, and Xan remembers exactly how many grains of salt were added to every dish that ever went through the test kitchens. So then, like, I was waiting on pins and needles for Zan to write to me.

[A]

Oh, okay. Let me set the mood.

[B]

So this morning, I woke up to an email from Zan. Dear Samin, I'm hot on the trail of the lemon cookies. Your correspondence letter contains a vital clue in the one page bit, which let me know that the recipe was a last touch. That's in quotes. The last page of the magazine for decades.

[A]

Oh, that's the feature. The last page feature was called.

[B]

Yes, the Last Touch was the sort of of the name of the last page of the magazine.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

By the way, Dory was exaggerating just a bit. I was only at Gourmet for 36 years. The recipe attached is copied from the Best of Gourmet, the annual book containing recipes from 1986.

[A]

Oh, 1986.

[B]

Yep. Isn't that exciting?

[A]

Yeah. Katie said she thought it was from the early 80s.

[B]

Pretty close.

[A]

Pretty close. I'm feeling good.

[B]

This was in the Last Touch from October of that year. There was another lemon icebox cookie in November 1977 that I might be able to find if I root through the most spidery shelves of my garage. However, if Katie thinks this might be the one, I can avoid donning my anti arachnid personal protective gear.

[A]

I'm gonna say, on the behalf of Katie, I'm gonna say, I think it's probably gonna be this 86 one. Not as well.

[B]

Let's take a look. So then she attached this. She attached the recipe.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so it's called Tangy Lemon Cookies.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so then I was pretty excited about it, and I was like, okay, I feel pretty good about this, but I have to say, as a detective, I really want to, like, come through for our clients.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so luckily, right around that time, I checked my email again, and Francis had written back saying that he had a lead because he thought of somebody who had every issue of Gourmet magazine from the 1980s, and he could put me in touch with that person. So I forwarded Xan's email to Francis to forward to his friend. So then we could just go straight to October 1986. Exactly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then also maybe that person could also look for the 1977 one, and then we could just get straight to the bottom of things.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So just a mere few hours later, Francis and his friend, the wonderful Ian Naur, sent me two scans of two recipes, including the entire last touch from 1986. A whole page of icebox cookies.

[A]

Oh, man.

[B]

German spice cookies, apple cream cheese cookies, double chocolate peanut butter cookies, and tangy lemon cookies. I believe. Believe this is the page.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And so then, just to make sure, I baked off a batch.

[A]

Hell, yes. Okay. What did they turn out to be like?

[B]

I have to say, these cookies are so good.

[A]

Can I see one? Can you show. Hold it up to the camera.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, interesting. Oh, okay. That's not what I was picturing.

[B]

It's a little. I might have sliced them a little too thin. But do you see it does have that brown ring?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You see that brown ring?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they smell heavenly. Like, so lemony. So as I was making them, I was really surprised so pleasantly by how much lemon product is in there. There's the zest of three entire lemons, which is a lot of lemon zest.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the juice of two lemons. It's so lemony.

[A]

Y.

[B]

Which. One of my pet peeves in a lemon dessert is when it's not lemony enough.

[A]

Right.

[B]

The only thing I changed about it, me being me, I just upped the salt a little bit, but everything else was just totally amazing and really, really wonderful and so simple. And I have to say, I really loved sort of going back in time to the way recipes were written, you know, in 1986. This just says, like, in a bowl with an electric mixer, cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the vanilla, the rind, and the lemon juice, and beat the mixture until it is smooth. And then it says, into the bowl, sift together the flour, the baking powder, the baking soda, and the salt, and blend the dough. Well, that's the whole recipe. That's like making the whole batch of cookies.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You assume a sort of, like, adeptness.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or you assume that there's a person around who can explain something to them. And I loved that because I loved imagining Katie with her mom. So maybe if Katie didn't know she was with her mom, and her mom could say, oh, this is how you sift some things together, you know.

[A]

That's great. So will you write up your version of the recipe with your additional salt and. And put it on our website?

[B]

Absolutely. And I will also put this amazing PDF scan.

[A]

That's great. What a fantastic journey that was, how many people you ended up having to get in touch with.

[B]

And everybody had so much fun, I think, being part of it. So, yeah, it was really fun. It felt very gratifying to be able to solve it.

[A]

So, you know, in Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes has a bunch of people that he always goes to for help.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

They were called the Irregulars.

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

But even better, you know what they were called?

[B]

What?

[A]

The Baker Street Irregulars.

[E]

Ooh.

[A]

Somehow I had forgotten this. Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street. Even better.

[B]

I just wish you could eat some of these cookies. Too bad.

[A]

Let's take a little break and when we come back, we're going to talk about cookies some more with our friend Helen Zaltzman. Not only are we back with a new season of episodes, we've also got brand new home cooking merch. We finally put our tomato can home cooking logo on a shirt. You can get it as a T shirt or a sweatshirt or a tank top or even a onesie for little baby home cooks. Plus, there's a tote bag with the drawing of the round salt can thing that has Samin and myself and our dogs Fava Bean and Watson on it. It is the pinnacle of tote bags and there is a pun in there if you think about how pinnacle is spelled. There's also a special shirt in honor of our special recurring guest. The man with hot takes and a surprisingly high pitched giggle. My dad, known to Samin and all my close friends as Sumesh Uncle. He has his own shirt that says Team Sumesh uncle featuring three little jars of saffron. And he undoubtedly has very strong opinions about their color and flavor. And of course, there's also still the OG sweatshirt with the drawing of the can of sardines and the inexplicable shrimp Jenga forever shirt. And all of this stuff was illustrated by our wonderful Mamie Rheingold. And all of it is available at Homecooking Show Merch. Again, it's Homecooking Show Merch.

[B]

If you're a fan of home cooking and the way it's all put together, but like me, you wish it had a little less Rishi in it, let me recommend Rishi's other podcast, the Brilliant and magical Song Exploder. Rishi is the host, but he cuts himself entirely out of the interviews he does with amazing musicians like Janelle Monae, Robin, Fleetwood Mac, U2 and more. So you just hear them talking about the creative process behind the making of one of their songs. I was actually a fan of Song Exploder way before Rishi and I became friends. Two of my favorite episodes are the ones with Solange and Sylvan Esso. The show is so carefully and thoughtfully made, and it's just really inspiring for anyone who creates things. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Joining us now is our dear friend Helen Zaltzman, host of the podcasts the Illusionist, Answer Me this and Veronica Marr's Investigations.

[A]

Helen Zaltzman, welcome to home cooking.

[E]

Thank you so much.

[A]

What was your relationship like to cookies when you were growing up?

[E]

Well, I was very excited by them because I lived in a household where we weren't really allowed very much sugar. So the opportunities for sugar were very precious. And on Sundays, my mum had this Good Housekeeping cookbook with a big colour photo preface with, like, photos of all of the things that you could cook in it. And I would go through it and pick a cookie to make each Sunday.

[A]

So you were baking cookies when you were a kid?

[E]

Yeah, keep me off the streets. Give me something to do.

[B]

So my household was the same. My mom was really controlling about the sugar, and so we very rarely had desserts unless it was a special occasion. And, like, somebody else brought a fruit tart and that also, like, for some reason, Iranians have this, like, obsession with Parisian pastries. And so, like, all Iranian pastry shops are like, a facsimile of a Parisian pastry shop. And for whatever reason, the one my mom always got and the one that, like, everyone got to bring to our house was always this, like, fruit tart with, like, a Gillette glaze. It was just. I was like, why won't somebody just bring, like, a proper thing of chocolate chip cookie? Like, why don't we just get a brownies, for God's sake? You know?

[E]

Like, why does everyone waste time?

[B]

Yeah, I'm like, what's up with things tart with kiwi slices on it?

[E]

Yeah, it's just basically whipped cream with a kiwi slice on top. And everyone's like, oh, brilliant. But we know the truth. Samin.

[B]

I know. Like, at some point I was like, okay, I guess if I want this thing, I'm gonna have to make it myself.

[A]

Helen, we know that one cookie that you make is gingerbread. It's one of the reasons why we wanted to have you on this episode. Can you tell us about your gingerbread adventures?

[E]

Yeah. Well, in 2004, I was sharing a house with four other people, and it was the first time I that I had had my own Christmas tree. Unwittingly bought one that was huge, and we didn't have any decorations. And I was like, oh, well, this is a real misfire. And then I thought, well, what I'll do is bake a lot of gingerbread and have people over to decorate it and then cover the tree with that. And then did that every year for, like, 10 years. Had gingerbread day, because it was really interesting seeing what decorating gingerbread brought out in people who may not have done arts type of things since they were children, and suddenly they were like, whoa, me and an icing gun. Whoa. So it was really delightful. Actually, my Twitter profile picture is from that very first gingerbread day.

[A]

Is that what that is?

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

So is it always ginger people or are there other ginger shapes?

[E]

Oh, so many other shapes. There was one year I did gingerbread houses, which I have a little scar on my hand from making them because the cement is boiling sugar. And people, they had to make gingerbread scenes with the houses. And the only rule was everything had to be edible. So even if it wasn't nice, it had to be edible. So someone made a log pile with sushi rolls. Someone made a kind of Colombo case in a building site where someone had been crushed by a fallen cookie falling off a crane, and the crane was made out of candy bars. It was amazing.

[A]

That's very elaborate.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

What about the gingerbread itself? Do you have a recipe that you always use for this tradition?

[E]

I've tried a couple. I think I tried a Prue Leith one, because Prue Leith, before she was judging Great British Baking show, had written a book called Leith's Baking Bible, which seems very authoritative. And I can't remember whether I use that or a Good Housekeeping one. It's just whichever one involves melting the butter with the sugar rather than having to, you know, do a lot of work with a spoon or a fork to combine them.

[B]

Oh, my style.

[E]

Yeah. You know, I'll do it if I have to, but if it can be done by melting, great. But my secret for gingerbread is just adding about, I don't know, 60% more spice than the recipe calls for.

[B]

Yes, I agree. I think ginger cookies, gingerbread, ginger cake, all that kind of stuff is never spiced enough. And I often. If a recipe doesn't have black pepper. I'll add a little bit of black pepper or white pepper into it too.

[E]

Interesting.

[B]

Or often like people tend to keep spices, especially pre ground spices around for a really long time and so then they kind of like lose all of their aromatic compounds and so they're just not as strong. So it doesn't hurt to sort of bump that up a little bit beyond whatever a recipe calls for. Especially the dried ginger.

[E]

It's a fun game when I visit my parents to see how old the oldest spice is.

[B]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. A thing I love to do anytime I visit a house and I'm cooking is like be like, how old's your baking soda? How old your baking powder? Like I just throw stuff. I like clean people's pantries out and throw stuff out.

[E]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[E]

Oh my God. Never come to my place. You know, 1998 was a great year for baking soda.

[A]

Samin, do you have a cookie cutter that you always use as like the base for which people can then decorate from or do people just freestyle from the get go?

[E]

Well, because I have to prepare the gingerbread, there has to be some kind of shape imposed by me. Cause there'll be hundreds of gingerbread cookies prepared for them to come and decorate.

[A]

Okay.

[E]

So when I saw an interesting looking cutter, I would add it to the collection. It's like worrying now to think how many I might have. I'd guess at least 40. There's quite a good lobster one. And that also lends itself to being like a moose head or an angel. You can, you know, you can be ingenious with these things. There's a hedgehog one. And because those are for. That can just be, I don't know, a rising sun that's slightly pointier at one end.

[A]

I like the idea of Helen as the ancient Greeks staring at the night sky. She's staring at her gingerbread imagining what she might see.

[E]

What are you.

[B]

But then once you decorate it, it kind of doesn't matter what the outline is.

[E]

In 2016, I went on a very long running radio show called Woman's Hour.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[E]

And they had challenged me to make the year 2016 in gingerbread. And so I made a Donald Trump and a Hillary Clinton out of gingerbread. And I think I did Theresa May cause she'd just become our prime minister. But the non depressing gingerbread item was Beyonce because 2016 was the year of lemonade. So I made a gingerbread Beyonce in the hold up video and she was holding a pretzel stick to smash the car with.

[B]

She's wearing, like, the regal golden dress. It's amazing. It's really the most exquisite cookie. Is it a cookie? She's more than a cookie.

[A]

It's truly amazing.

[B]

What did you do with her?

[E]

I don't know. For all I know, she might still be at the BBC, because also, gingerbread lasts for years. I think if I were really going for it and maybe I could still do this. This festive season is try to do Beyonce's 2018 Coachella set in gingerbread. So you've got, like, the big pyramid. You can have cookies in yellow or pink icing on it for the band. And then you can have Beyonce in that. That cape that is, like, lots of gold and silver. Oh, this is a plan.

[A]

Yeah. And then if you like it, then you should put I sing on it.

[E]

Oh, no. All right, I'll allow it. He's back in the room.

[A]

Helen, thank you so much.

[E]

Thank you both.

[A]

You can follow Helen on Instagram HelenZaltzman. You can also find her on Twitter HelenZaltzman. You can listen to all of her brilliant podcasts. You can find them wherever you found this one. They are the Illusionist Veronica Mars Investigations. And answer me this. We got a lot of questions from people who were having technical difficulties with their cookies. And I thought maybe we could do a little lightning round to just give some information on some cookie basics.

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

So I'm going to play you a couple of questions. We got multiple examples of these kinds of questions, but these are going to stand in for all the other people who called in with the same basic issue.

[B]

I hope I know the answer. Chances are I don't.

[A]

All right, here's one.

[E]

Hi.

[C]

I always have a problem when I'm baking cookies that they turn out really cakey, even ones that I've chosen the recipe to specifically be something that's definitely not cakey. And I think I'm following all the directions correctly. Even, like, buying new baking soda and baking powder. And this year, my family got me one of those fancy stand mixers, too. Thanks so much.

[B]

Wait, I have a question for you. What's a cakey cookie?

[A]

You can't imagine.

[B]

Well, I can sort of imagine like, a cakey chocolate chip cookie, I guess.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But to me, I'm like, well, that's a specific kind of recipe.

[A]

This is a common issue for, you know, maybe not James Beard award winners, but for the rest of us mere mortals, cakey cookies is a common issue.

[B]

Describe it, please.

[A]

Well, I'll tell you what my suspicion Is.

[B]

Yeah, you answered this lightning one. Because I don't even know. And we're just talking like a chocolate chip cookie.

[A]

Yeah. If your cookie is coming out too cakey, I think there's probably too much egg in it.

[B]

I mean, that would make sense. Because what I'm imagining when you're saying a cakey cookie, as in they're very soft and fluffy. Is that what we're talking about?

[A]

That's exactly what we're talking about. Another issue I think could be she mentioned that she has a stand mixer. It could be whipping your dough too much.

[B]

Like over creaming.

[A]

Like over creaming. Yeah, exactly.

[B]

I think it would be really hard to cream so much. I think that's less likely to me, I think.

[A]

I don't know because I don't have a stand mixer. So what am I? How would I know?

[B]

What do you know? Oh, boo hoo hoo. Woe is me. You can only imagine. Also, there might be too much leavener, like too much baking soda or baking powder in there.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Another kind of question that we got was the opposite. For example, Emily writes, I love making cookies, but they always come out paper thin. What am I doing wrong? I use room temperature unsalted butter and chill my dough for a few hours and have even tried to chill it for 72 hours. That's a lot.

[B]

That is a lot.

[A]

But my cookies still come out flat. Help me, please.

[B]

It sounds like you have taken a lot of the good precautions that I would have recommended. So it sounds like possibly your oven's not at the right temperature when the cookies are going in. And they're spending a lot of time, like spreading in the oven rather than going immediately in and rising, you know? And so maybe your oven's not properly preheated, or maybe you need to get an oven thermometer or have your oven calibrated. That's one thing I would suggest. Another thing is when I made the tangy lemon icebox cookies, they spread a ton. They're super spreaders. And I wondered.

[A]

Can't use that term.

[B]

You can't use a super spreader.

[A]

Do not eat those kinds of cookies.

[B]

I went back and I really looked very closely at the recipe, and I realized it's just a very, very buttery recipe. It's a really high butter recipe. And so those kinds of cookies just spread a lot.

[A]

Yeah. This is relevant to Tori's question in that it's also about ratios. If she's chilling the dough that much, which is normally where the fat firms up and lets the cookie hold its shape better. I think it's probably just that there's not enough flour for how much butter she's got in there.

[B]

Yes, I definitely think that's correct. I think flour. But I'm not saying you need to tweak your recipe. I'm just saying that is a spreadable recipe.

[A]

Okay. And our final cookie question. I might have saved my favorite for the end. This comes from Megan.

[C]

So here's what the situation is. I want to make the cookie, cookie cookie. So what you do is you take and bake chocolate chip cookie. Amazing. Easy. You take that, you chop it up and then that's a mix in for a new chocolate chip cookie dough. So you have chocolate chips and the pre baked cookie in one and then that's the dough. Delicious. And so then there's a second dough that is a sugar cookie dough and then that is going to get wrapped in the chocolate chip cookie cookie dough. So it's three cookies in one. Right. So the situation that I'm dealing with is that the internal cookie is bleeding into the external cookie. And my goals for this cookie creation is that it's two distinct cookies, one at the external the surface and then one internally for a lovely little surprise. But it's just bleeding into each other. It's kind of getting raw in the middle. I've tried like freezing it. I've tried rolling the sugar cookie in flour. And I'm really having an issue. So if you have any ideas on how to help me create this Frankenstein cookie cookie, cookie monster creation, please help me. Thank you.

[A]

How great is this?

[B]

Okay, first of all, Megan, I really salute your cookie, cookie, cookie. And just Rishi's face is lighting up.

[A]

I just love it. It's a turducken, but it's made of cookies.

[B]

It's a ter cookie cookie. Ookie, ookie. The only reason I sort of have an idea about how this could possibly work. And I'm not saying that it's going to turn out well. I'm just saying I think it'll turn out better than how things are currently going for you. And it comes from early days of like buzzfeed where you would see these strange sort of like hybrid foods on the Internet be like, oh, so I saw a chocolate chip cookie that when you bit into it, revealed an Oreo.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

And so I was like, I have to make this. I have to make this. This is a work of art. But the key is that the center cookie was already baked.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I think that's what the problem is is that you're trying to put a raw dough inside of another raw dough. So I think you gotta pre bake your sugar cookie.

[A]

At least par. Bake it, right?

[B]

No, I think you gotta all the way bake it.

[A]

All the way bake it. Okay.

[B]

I think you gotta all the way bake it. Then you enrobe it in your dough. In your chocolate chip cookie. Chocolate chip cookie. Chocolate chip cookie dough.

[A]

Your chocolate chip. Cookie chip dough.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

By the way, I think if Megan just stopped there at the first two parts of the cookie, oh, my God, that would be so great. The idea of using a chocolate chip cookie as a mix in is already. I'm already sold.

[B]

I can't wait to see a picture of this.

[A]

Okay, here's a update from the future.

[B]

Here's an update from the future.

[A]

I was in the middle of editing this episode and I got something in the mail. Wait. I recorded a video to send it to Samin and I'm just gonna play it right here. Well, you'll play the audio. I just opened the door and found something at my doorstep.

[B]

Look at what it is. Whoa.

[A]

That's me trying to do angel voice, you know, like, because I opened the door and There was a KitchenAid stand mixer there.

[B]

Can you believe it?

[A]

No, not really. What did you do earlier in this episode when you said, are you just talking about this so you can get a free stand mixer? And I said, I guess, kind of. Is that what started this for you?

[B]

I think so. I think that planted a little seed.

[A]

It was so nice of you. It was incredible. I can't believe that you pulled that off.

[B]

It was very fun. I felt very Santa ish. I mean, I had help from a lot of elves, including KitchenAid, who immediately said yes.

[A]

So that's amazing. Thank you to everybody. Also, wait, hold on one second. Did you know that Samin Nossrat is an anagram for minor Santas?

[B]

Oh, my God, no. But I do know my name backwards is Tarson Nemus. What's your name? Backwards.

[A]

Unpronounceable. Well, Samin, that's the end of the podcast.

[B]

Bye, guys. I'm not going. I'm chaining myself to the desk.

[A]

That's a wrap on our four part series.

[B]

I have to say, I'm really sad.

[A]

I know. But you're gonna go work on your book and you're gonna make all kinds of cool things, and I'm excited to see what you do with all the extra time that you have now that I'm not bothering you.

[B]

I mean, do you promise you're not gonna bother me anymore?

[A]

I could, but you know, I can't keep that.

[B]

I know. We're so grateful to Margaret Miller, Zach McNeese, Gary Lee and Casey Deal for their help with this podcast. We couldn't have made it without them.

[A]

And of course, to Mamie Rheingold, who made all of our wonderful full artwork.

[B]

And we're a proud member of Radiotopia, a collective of independent podcasts.

[A]

You can learn more about all the Radiotopia shows at Radiotopia fm.

[B]

And remember, our website is homecooking show where you can find recipes and transcripts for all of our episodes.

[A]

And if you can't remember that, but you can remember shrimpjenga.com that also works. I hope you'll follow us so you can stay in touch.

[B]

You can follow Rishi on Twitter and.

[A]

Instagram rishihirway And Samin is osamine.

[B]

Stay healthy, eat well and take care of each other.

[A]

And have happy holidays and a happy new Year and all the best for a much better 2021.

[B]

Knock on wood. Until then, I'm Samin.

[A]

And I'm Rishi.

[B]

And we'll be home cooking and we'll be home.

[A]

And we'll be homies cooking.

[B]

We will be homies cooking. Radiotopia from PRX.