At weeklyhotels.com, you can go through our various hotels to pick which one is the best for you, you can also find hotels with in-room kitchenettes, thereby you have an option of making meals of your own choice in any of our hotels with in –room kitchenettes, by preparing your own meals instead of eating out during every meal will save you hundreds of dollars. Hardly anyone wants to spend their entire vacation cooking, in our kitchenettes will be found some appliances such as a coffeemaker, a refrigerator, a microwave oven or a hotplate and a mini-bar or small overtop. You can make meals such as chef salad, spaghetti and rice, chicken and sausage, tacos, hamburger stroganoff and microwave’s more, etc. Another meal you can also consider doing yourself is cookies. It is quite easy and simple baking cookies in in-room kitchenettes. Here is how you can bake cookies in any of our hotels with in-room kitchenette with the right ingredients and techniques.
Ingredients
Using the correct ingredients in their proper ratios is crucial to good baking. For best results, follow the recipe and measure ingredients correctly.
Flour
Most cookie recipes call for all-purpose or pastry flour. If you use bread flour with its high gluten protein content, or cake flour, which is high in starch, you’ll end up with cookies that tend to spread less when you bake them. Recipes for shortbread cookies or other cookies with a crumbly texture usually have a higher flour-to-liquid ratio.
Leaveners
These are the ingredients that make baked goods puff up. In cookie recipes, the two most common leaveners are baking soda and baking powder.
Fats
Fats are all about flavor and spread—what a cookie tastes like, and whether it keeps its shape or flattens as the fats heat and liquefy in the oven. In general, more fat in the recipe produces flat, crispy cookies, while less fat produces puffier, cake-like cookies.
The kind of fat you use also makes a difference. Cookies are made primarily with butter, margarine or shortening, and each behaves differently. Note that whipped spreads are not suitable for baking.
Sugars
Like fats, sugars liquefy when they heat in the oven. The type and amount of sugar both play a big role in cookie performance.
Eggs and Liquids
Eggs are a binding agent, holding ingredients together. Egg yolks add richness but allow a crisp texture after baking, but egg whites tend to make cookies dry and cakey. To make up for the drying effect of the egg whites, extra sugar is often added. This is why cookies made with just egg whites tend to be so sweet—think of light and airy French macarons.
Liquids can either cause cookies to puff up or spread. If egg is the liquid, it will create a puffy, cake-like texture. Just a tablespoon or two of water or other liquid will help your cookies spread into flatter and crisper rounds.
Chocolates and nuts
Chocolates and nuts, if recipe calls for, can be put in the dough.
Technique tips
- Sift dry ingredients
Sift dry ingredients like flour, leaveners (baking powder or baking soda) and cocoa powder (not sugar) to combine and aerate them, making for fluffier cookies. Put them in a fine mesh strainer over a piece of parchment paper, shake the strainer until everything’s on the paper, then when it is time to add, pick up the paper and let the ingredients slide out into the mixing bowl. If sifting is not called for, whisk the dry ingredients for 30 seconds to combine.
- Cream butter and sugar
Cream the butter and sugar together. This creates air pocket that expands in the oven, making the dough tender. Butter beats up the fluffiest at room temperature – it should hold a fingerprint with some resistance.
- Beat in eggs
Beat eggs into creamed butter and sugar, one at a time, to add moisture to air pockets and flavor to the dough. They will incorporate best at room temperature; place them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes to warm them up quickly. Now is also the time to add vanilla extract or sometimes milk, if the recipe calls for it.
- Add dry ingredients to wet
Add the dry ingredients in a few batches, folding gently. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as you go to keep everything incorporating evenly. Use a light torch – overworking the flour makes for tough results.
- Fold in chocolate or nuts
Fold the heavy ingredients, like chocolate and nuts, into the batter to keep it light and tender. Sprinkle the mix-ins on top, then take a large flexible spatula and slice it into the center of the batter. Draw the spatula through the batter, folding the batter from the bottom of the bowl over the top. Keep going just until everything is incorporated.
- Shape cookies
Each cookie recipe has its own shaping instructions. Drop cookies are simplest: Scoop dough with a spoon or a small ice-cream scoop and space the dough evenly on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Other shaping techniques include making a chilled log of dough and slicing it, rolling and cutting, and piping or using a cookie press.
- Bake and cool
Bake for the shortest time suggested in the recipe, and then check one cookie from the middle of the baking sheet and one from the edge for doneness. Rotate the baking sheets to help cookies cook evenly. Remember, the cookies will keep cooling once removed from the oven. Let them cool completely on a rack before decorating and store them in an airtight container.