Cookie Chemistry

It was a dark and stormy night, and all lay quiet through the house.

On this cool October evening, rain pattered on the windows and I could think of nothing better than curling up with a book, a cup of hot cocoa and some warm cookies.

There was only one problem. I didn't have the right ingredients to make the classic Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies! In fact, I didn't have the right ingredients to make any kind of cookie -- not enough flour, butter and sugar in the house, and with the rain pouring down I wasn't about to head outside. 

Fortunately for me, I know a thing or two about the chemistry of baking and was able to cobble together a variety of ingredients from the kitchen pantry to make some really delicious cookies!

In this Instructable we'll go over the original Toll House recipe and the "hacked" recipe I created. I'll also provide a few tips for how to make great cookies on the fly.

Step 1: Assess what you have in your pantry

Here's a picture of what I had available. More detailed:

• I only had one stick of butter left, most cookie recipes call for more fat than that
• Some canola oil
• Half empty bags of white flour and almond meal
• A little white sugar, some brown sugar, some crystallized honey, some molasses and peanut butter
• A half empty bag of chocolate chips, nearly empty bag of trail mix, half eaten candy bar
• A couple eggs
• Various spices and extracts

Faced with this situation, most people would run to the store and pick up a bit extra of whatever was needed. Not me, though! Next, let's take a look at the original recipe and I'll show you to modify it to suit what you've got.

Comments

[sunshiine]

This is totally awesome! I often want to bake something and don't have all the ingredients. Now all I need to do is visit your page and make do! Thanks! Have a great day!
Sunshiine

[SHIFT!]

This combines my three favorite things in the world: Cookies, Science and Reverse Engineering! I love almond too- makes for great pie crust, but never thought of using vegetable oil before.

What did you use as the Milk base for your recipe? Was it the Molasses and Honey? I sometimes use coconut milk, myself, when I'm out of dairy products.

[zazenergy]

Thanks Matthew! I kept the two eggs that the original recipe called for (is that what you mean?), though coconut milk sounds delicious.

In this recipe the eggs are primarily a "binder", so there are a few substitutions I can recommend if you don't have eggs on hand:

- almond meal
- 1/4 a cup of applesauce
- 1/2 a mashed up banana

You could even try using a gelatin solution (now that would be WILD).

[mikeasaurus]

mmm cookies!