{"id":9278,"date":"2020-04-30T09:12:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T08:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=9278"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:59:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:59:47","slug":"the-ultimate-cookies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2020\/04\/30\/the-ultimate-cookies\/","title":{"rendered":"The ultimate cookies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is much talk lately of people doing their hobbies, as many of us are spending more time at home. I believe that there are \u201chobby people\u201d and \u201cnon-hobby people\u201d; I fall into the former camp. I hear people asking about what hobbies they might take up. That never occurs to me, as I have always had a number of hobbies, some of which have been with me all of my life. Although I dabble in lots of things, I would list my main hobbies as being photography, reading\/writing and food\/drink. A manifestation of the last one is my enjoyment of cooking \u2026<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Even as I child, I was always keen on food. So being able to cook was an obvious necessity as I grew up. Over the years, it became a pleasure. I think that one particular attraction of cooking for me is the subtle blend of science and art [interestingly, this is true for photography too]. Cooking food is basically and set of physical and chemical processes. In general, if you subject a set of ingredients to a given process you will get the same result every time. However, there are almost always a huge number of variables, so taking a purely scientific approach can be almost impossible; that is when cooking becomes an art, when you do it using experience and intuition. A good example is roast potatoes. I find it almost impossible to get totally consistent results. This is unsurprising when you consider the variables:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>what variety of potatoes do you use?<\/li>\n<li>do you peel them?<\/li>\n<li>how big are the pieces that you cut?<\/li>\n<li>do you par-boil them first? If so, for how long and do you shake them in the pan to rough them up afterwards?<\/li>\n<li>what kind of fat\/oil do you use for roasting?<\/li>\n<li>do you heat the pan before putting the potatoes in?<\/li>\n<li>what temperature do you set the oven?<\/li>\n<li>do you take them out and move them around in the pan from time to time?<\/li>\n<li>how long do they take to roast?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is no surprise that they are so random. Some people say that this is part of the fun of cooking. I have a scientific frame of mind, so I am not so sure.<\/p>\n<p>I have always had more of a \u201csweet tooth\u201d than is good for me. As a result, I used to eat far too many cookies [or biscuits as we call them &#8211; referring to the smaller, crisper items]. A few years ago, I decided that I should go for quality instead of quantity and started purchasing nice quality, triple chocolate chip [American style] cookies from a local store. I got into the habit of having one of these with my coffee each morning. [I also cut down to a single cup of coffee most mornings and bought a very good coffee machine to accommodate that.] This practice was fine &#8211; I just needed to visit the store every so often to stock up on my favorite cookies [I had previously gone through a process of selecting which store\u2019s product was best.]. Last year I started wondering whether I could make my own cookies.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2020\/04\/FF171DB7-D68A-45C1-BAF5-3A932CC038D1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-9279\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2020\/04\/FF171DB7-D68A-45C1-BAF5-3A932CC038D1-520x362.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"376\" height=\"262\" \/><\/a>When I got around to trying it, having researched quite a few recipes, I was quite pleased. They were not at all bad. However, they were not <em>exactly<\/em> what I was after. What I want: good amount of chocolate, not too sweet, very slight crispness [not too soft]. So, when I was drafting my <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/blog\/2020\/01\/09\/12-things-for-2020\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">12 Things for 2020<\/a> I included #8: &#8220;master making biscuits\u201d [where I meant cookies]. Just lately I have being doing some research. I found what seemed to be an easy, but flexible recipe and made the first batch exactly as it said. They were OK, but a little too sweet. I reduced the milk\/white chocolate content. Still a little sweet and a little on the \u201ccakey\u201d side. I tried again, with double amount of cocoa and increased the baking time by 2 minutes. Still not crisp enough. Next time, 4 minutes extra baking time, but this time I made fewer, but bigger cookies. Maybe an error, changing 2 variables &#8211; still cakey. Next time, I will try smaller cookies again with some extra time. Fingers crossed.<\/p>\n<p>I am doing my best with this research to pursue it scientifically, only tweaking one variable at a time, but there are still many of them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>brown\/white sugar ratio<\/li>\n<li>cocoa powder to flour ratio<\/li>\n<li>quantity and ratio of white\/milk\/dark chocolate<\/li>\n<li>cooking time<\/li>\n<li>cooking temperature<\/li>\n<li>size of cookies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019m impatient to get to the optimal result. Partly this is just so that I can say that I have succeeded, but also as I want to start creating some new variations, but need to get the basics right first.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/colinwalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6579\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/linkedin.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/colin_walls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6583\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/twitter.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/colinwalls.author\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6591\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/facebook.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6599\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/wordpress.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is much talk lately of people doing their hobbies, as many of us are spending more time at home&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[733,302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cookies","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10887,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9278\/revisions\/10887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9278"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=9278"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=9278"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}