DISASTER BAKING #7: Brown Butter Garam Masala Snickerdoodles in the Age of Surveillance
Dear Disaster Bakers,
Last week I tried something new—democracy.
I tweeted a poll to let readers (We, the People!) vote on which cookie should go in this week's newsletter. With 56 percent of the vote, garam masala snickerdoodles beat out both gingerbread squares and fudge thumbprints (a la the cookie of my childhood, Stella D'Ora Swiss Fudge). Fine, I resolved; a warm, spiced cookie, but no crunch. No hints of toffee, no crisp edges. No interruptions, just sweet seasonal cheer. Tea leaves and cinnamon and a whisper of cloves, but baked on a sheet pan.
I tinkered with the recipe all week. I reviewed Bon Appetit's snickerdoodles and compared them to two iterations from the New York Times. Could I sneak a third egg in the dough? Could I brown the butter? I could. I googled more. What about extra cinnamon, to compensate for the cumin that shows up in some garam masala mixes? Could I rejigger it to skip the stand mixer? (KitchenAid, come get me!)
Wait, Time for Some Bake Theory™. Most cookie recipes insist on creaming butter and sugar with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, a step which doesn't just combine the ingredients but aerates the butter. It's true. The paddle smacks the butter against the side of the bowl so many times it creates mini pockets of air. (This is of course a fantastic image for a Disaster Baker, who can appreciate a little harmless aggresion, but not for one who doesn't own a stand mixer.) That's the reason so many recipes mandate creaming the butter and sugar "until light in color and texture" or whatever. To fluff it up. With air. The resultant dough is now less dense than the mass of butter and sugar it started as. Post-oven, that extra step will mean a loftier, fluffier cookie. You can read all about how it works here.
But what if you're, for example, me? Gazing out at a mixer-less landscape. With the snickerdoodle of your dreams just over the horizon. Picture it: It has some chew. It's on the flatter side; firm without crunchiness. Craggier than Beto O'Rourke's abs. Authoritative, like Pelosi when she walked out of the White House this week. But with some sweetness and heat.
The point is I decided to skip the mixer. I browned the butter until the apartment smelled better than a Subway franchise on a summer eve. (That bread scent is real, and I want it in solid perfume form. Like Glossier You, but carbier.) Because the butter was melted, I didn't need to and in fact couldn't cream it in a mixer. I also couldn't slather it all over, despite a mad impulse to cake it on like Eucerin, which I resisted.
But then after a euphoric two hours or so oblivious to email while I shopped and measured and baked, I hunkered down to check in on the world because I like to freak myself out before the work week kicks off, which is when I spotted a newsletter from Bon Appétit.
The subject line read: "How to Brown Butter and Use It for Everything." And then inside: "Like Garam Masala? These DIY Spice Blends Are the Easiest Upgrade." It was a coincidence, but it felt eerie. I'd just browned two sticks of butter. Just spent the afternoon in a garam-masala-induced haze. Had all BA's subscribers gotten this email, or just me? (Probably all, but still.) The call had come from inside the house! The call was so far inside the house it had pre-heated the oven!
I had a bunch of roommates at one point in school, and one of them liked to snoop. It was harmless, kind of. She was so blatant about it that it felt less like a violation and more like she wanted to write a term paper on our telecommunication. It bothered one of the other roommates, though. "I don't care if the government spies," she used to declare. "Just like I don't mind if someone sees me naked through a window, as long as he can't make out my face." But this, she couldn't tolerate. To her, the violation was in the identification. Some far off person, scanning all your Google docs for ties to the Russian government? Whatever. But your roommate? In your texts? No.
The distinction—which was, to be fair, insane even when she said it—has collapsed. On Monday, less than 12 hours after Bon Appétit tried to teach me how to brown butter and about 14 hours after I'd done it on my own stovetop, the New York Times published a B-A-N-A-N-A-S investigation: "Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They're Not Keeping It Secret."
It's worth the full read, but the gist is that in the relentless march to optimize ourselves and our routines, we've traded ease for freedom. Anonymous is a proper noun now; the hacker, not an adjective. And I could do a lot more than I do now to guard whatever shred of personal digital space I have left. We all could.
(Except for my brother, whose disaster preparedness is such that he's mapped the least monitored road from Los Angeles to Vancouver for when war next breaks out in America. He's also had a handle on his "location data," since he was four and told my mother he would never ask an adult in a uniform for help if he was lost because what if a "bad man" had killed the man in the uniform in order to capture him.)
But so far I haven't. I haven't taken one step! I haven't deleted one app! I haven't thrown Amazon Alexa out the window! I don't know where to start or even if there's a point. Is there? Write me and tell me what to do before the U.S. government installs chips in all of our brains. In the meantime, make these snickerdoodles.
And share them with real live humans, not just Instagram. Maybe it'll help us all feel less alone, not in a creepy way.
Brown Butter Garam Masala Snickerdoodles
Servings: I squeezed out 22 cookies, but I also made them giant.
Distractability: 5
Scratchpad: I would wager that no one exercise—not cardio, not shopping, not drinking—can block out the cold, cruel world like browning butter can. Five points for that in all its majestic toastiness. A gold medal. A Pulitzer.
Notes: The garam masala I used listed cardamom as its first ingredient, which is important. (Yes, I should have made it from scratch; no, I did not.) If yours lists cumin or coriander first, the flavor might come across a little potent in the cookies. You can still use it, just add an extra pinch each of cardamom and cinnamon. If you want to make your own, I've used this one with success; I'd just add 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg at the end.
Also, I tinkered with this recipe a lot and tried to determine the perfect length of time to refrigerate the dough, post mix. When I froze it for 20 minutes or so, it took a lot longer to bake and didn't take color quite like I wanted it to. I liked it best with a 15-30 minute chill in the fridge. Also, loved what the high-heat oven did to it. Spread much less than a normal cookie would thanks to the instant shock of flames. Recommend.
Ingredients:
Dough:
1 cup (2 sticks, 226 grams) butter
2 1/2 cups (300 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (105 grams) packed brown sugar
1 cup (200 grams) white sugar
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar (essential to that quintessential snickerdoodle taste)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
To Coat:
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon garam masala
To-Do List:
Brown the butter. Melt butter in a light-colored sauce pan over medium heat. Swirl that pan periodically to make sure the butter toasts evenly. As the butter melts, it tends to foam. It'll start out the color of a daffodil, then progress from emoji to St. Tropez tan to deep brown. Mine foamed so much I couldn't see the butter beneath it; I skimmed some of it off for a better peek. Browned milk solids will fall to the bottom of the pan. Let those toast, but not burn. When the flecks start to look like Yogi Bear and the scent has intoxicated you to the point of delirium, it's done! Scrape the butter (flecks and all) into a medium heatproof bowl and let cool.
Make the dough. Preheat oven to 425F. In a medium bowl, stir sugars, flour, garam masala, cinnamon, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. When the butter has cooled to the point that it feels warm on a finger, but too cold for a bath, whisk eggs into it, then stir in vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and mix to combine.
Chill the dough in the fridge for at least 10 minutes, but ideally 15-20.
Coat the cookies. In a small bowl or even on a plate, mix the leftover sugar, cinnamon, and garam masala. Take the chilled dough out of the fridge and roll it into somewhat-bigger-than-a-tablespoon-sized balls. Roll each ball in the sugar mix, then transfer onto a parchment-paper-lined sheet pan. (I used two quarter pans.)
Bake 'em. Bake the cookies until just set in the center, around 9-12 minutes. I took them out at 10, and they were luscious. If you can't chill them for the full 20 minutes, they'll bake faster, so keep an eye on them. You want them to deepen in color, but not look quite firm. Let them cool in their pans for a bit, as they'll be too tender to move onto wire racks when they first come out of the oven. Now is probably a good time to admit that I've basically never transferred anything onto a wire rack, which are a pain to clean and put one more step between me and cookies.
DistractiLinks
Well, isn't this a welcome surprise? 12 months after Recording Academy President Neil Portnow blamed women for the fact that his institution had systematically overlooked them, the Grammys made amends and humbled itself before the likes of Cardi B, SZA, Lady Gaga, Janelle Monae, and H.E.R. Doesn't that feel nice, Neil?
Geena Davis has told us so for at least a decade, as has the data, but now it's all in an article in the New York Times so maybe someone (somemen) will listen: "Movies Starring Women Earn More Than Male-Led Films, Study Finds." Put Maya Rudolph in all films, do not make me say it again.
Does Michael Cohen distract us from our problems now, or contribute to them? IDK, please vote.
I wrote this insane profile of Shawn Holley, who parlayed a stint at the Public Defender's Office in Los Angeles into a friendship with Kim Kardashian and ko. Read it; KKW thinks it's great.
Fork Over That Dough
Still She Rises is the first public defender office nationwide that's dedicated to the representation of mothers in the criminal justice system. It operates out of Oklahoma. But it's been on my mind this week after news broke that Jazmine Headley, a mother, had been arrested and had her son ripped from her arms while she attempted to secure child care services.
Thanks to public outrage and some dedicated lawyers, charges against her have been dropped, but cases like this happen with less attention all the time and ruin families and lives. Kick a few bucks to an organization that shines a light.
Oh, and
ILY, Kim. An imperial ruler in our time.