Karen MacInerney wrote:
>>Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 10626 Calories; 474g Fat
>
> Wow. That's some cookie.
>
> I started using oat flour for some of the flour years ago, and I like
> not just the texture, but the taste. (I have a recipe in the next book
> that comes out that's for oatmeal chocolate chippers; they're chewy,
> but thin.) I cut the shortening b/c of the big trans fat thing;
> besides, Mrs. Fields' cookies are great, and they don't use any
> shortening!

Definition time. Shortening in pastry is any fat. They don't use much
hydrogenated vegetable shortening as a direct ingredient. But they do
use some, and they're further in there as part of their ingredient
formulations. They use butter as their major shortening.

From the Mrs. Fields web site:
Ingredients: All cookies contain the following: enriched flour (bleached
wheat flour, barley malt, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate,
riboflavin, folic acid), butter, brown sugar, whole eggs, vanilla, salt,
and baking soda.

All cookies may contain one or more of the following: sugar, semi sweet
chocolate chips [sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, butter oil, soy
lecithin (an emulsifier), salt, vanilla], milk chocolate chips [sugar,
whole milk powder, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, butter oil, soy
lecithin (an emulsifier), salt, vanilla], macadamia nuts, raisins,
walnuts, peanut butter [peanuts, dextrose, partially hydrogenated
vegetable oil (rapeseed, soybean, and/or cottonseed oils)], pumpkin,
oats, whole milk powder, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil,
sweetened coconut (coconut, sugar, water, propylene glycol, salt, and
sodium metabisulfite), chocolate liquor (processed with alkali), corn
syrup, invert sugar, cocoa (processed with alkali), spice, coffee
extract, natural flavors, soy lecithin (an emulsifier), wheat fiber,
sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate.

> Sour cream might be an interesting twist, although I always
> thought that would make them 'cakey'.

Not necessarily. Real sour cream (as opposed to commercial stuff with
all the emulsifiers, gums, etc.) will be the addition of more fat and
more water with a little protein. As such, it will emphasize some
characteristics depending on the remaining balance of ingredients. So if
the recipe is already short, the fat will make it more so, but the water
and protein will bring it more to a tender, chewy bite than the
flakiness or granularity of a typical short pastry.

> I didn't know about the sugar, though. Interesting; I would have
> thought brown sugar would make them chewier.

Brown sugar won't make things more chewy than white sugar by an
appreciable amount. The little bit of molasses will have a small effect.
Invert sugars will make things chewier. Corn syrups, etc.

> Back to the kitchen for me!

Time for some fun...

Pastorio

> Karen MacInerney
> Kitchen experimenter, family chauffeur, and culinary mystery author