I’ll try and get pictures later if I don’t eat them first, but when ever my wife makes cookies, they look just fine the first few days. Then a few small holes show up in them, and after about 5 days, they look kinda like sponges. Any ideas?
My educated guess:
Leavening agents (baking soda, cream of tartar, etc. in conjunction with an acidic ingredient) are used in most cookie recipes* to cause small bubbles in the the dough. This makes for a light, delicious cookie. After a few days, the cookies start to dry out a bit, and the cookie-matrix is weakened. Then the holes collapse, like some sort of delicious, culinary sinkhole.
*some don’t - Scottish shortbread immediately comes to mind.
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I have two suggestions: Eat more cookies; or cook less cookies. You’re taking too long to eat your cookies – they should be gone by day 3.
For the love of god, I try, I really do. But dammit, she makes them faster then I can eat them. Really, she’ll make a HUGE batch of dough, and then she’ll cook off about 4 cookies sheets worth each day until it’s gone. Then when I can’t eat them fast enough she accuses me of not liking them (they’re REALLY good). And some how I only weigh about 155. ('course I was 130 when we got married I think)
You know, you almost sound like you’re complaining. Of course you aren’t, because that would be just plain silly.
You have to tell us what kind if you want to know why.
Hide all her big mixing bowls?
I’ll leave that to you. She’d rip my head off if I stole her bakeware.
Like someone said above, the cookies probably dry out and their structure is compromised.
That said, I have two suggestions, both things my grandma taught me.
Store the cookies in an airtight container with a slice of bread. The bread is even more sensitive than the cookies to drying out, so the bread will dry while the cookies remain soft. (It sounds strange, I know, but it works.)
Make little cookie dough balls with all of the dough that isn’t being made that day. I’d pack a dozen little balls in each quart size freezer bag. Use as many bags as it takes for the dough. Then, when she wants to make the cookies, all she needs to do is take a dozen little balls out at a time to bake. This way, you’re not inundated with cookies at once. They should keep in the freezer for quite a long time; my grandma’s always did. (She liked to mix her dough in bus boy tubs and kept the frozen balls for months.)
Yeah, I hear that.
I have a similar problem, I still can’t get Mrs. Danalan to cook for just the two of us. She’s fixing enchiladas right now, and there’s enough to feed us and our two sons, plus lunch tomorrow. Trouble is, the two sons left home 5 years ago! So it’s enchiladas for dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, dinner tomorrow, lunch the day after tomorrow – then I’ll probably have some for breakfast before the end of the week.