About every other week, I’m posting about a project I recently completed. Usually this involves baking, as that’s my favorite project, but it could involve books, home projects, etc. Dads have lots of roles, after all. This week’s project, Baltimore Berger Cookies, is from King Arthur Flour. You can find the recipe here.

I’ve had to travel sometimes as part of my job. When I was a contractor for a systems integrator, this meant traveling to different places in the U.S. Moving into the non-contractor world, the rare travel situations have been to other countries.

No matter how good or bad a trip to another country is, the food experiences are always interesting. Lots of people rave about incredible dinners, but on a trip to Finland a couple of years ago I enjoyed breakfast far more. The overall amount, variety, and quality of food was excellent, but one little item became a favorite morning treat. It was a crisp cookie which had a fairly basic dough flavor, but was half dipped in chocolate. The crunch of it, the smooth chocolate taste, were a nice little sugar rush to wake my jetlagged behind up.

I felt weird doing it, but I took a picture of one of those cookies. I was unable to find anything about it online once I got back, and I couldn’t find any recipe that really looked like it. That is, until King Arthur Flour published in their magazine Sift about favorite foods in different states. And lo and behold–Baltimore had something called a Berger cookie that looked darned close to what I ate in Finland. Of course, that meant I had to make it to see if it actually was similar.

Preparation

And for roughly the second time in my life, I figured, hey, let’s try this mise en place thing. As a refresher for those who hadn’t read where I tried it before, mise en place generally means “everything in its place”. As there were quite a few ingredients with this recipe, it seemed well worth lining everything up first.

You can see in the picture that there’s a bit of a gap between the ingredients for the cookie (that’s the left group) and the ingredients for the frosting (that’s the right group). This helped me to see what needed combined with other items, saving some time as I stepped through the recipe.

Putting Things Together

This recipe honestly isn’t that difficult. It’s more time-consuming than some recipes I’ve done, and lots less than others. Combining the cookie ingredients in the order listed, in the manner listed, yielded a modestly thick dough. I tried flattening them with the greased bottom of a juice glass, like the recipe says, but it didn’t go well. In the end, using a spatula to simultaneously flatten and spread them worked the best.

I know, you look at that and think, “Oh my gosh, that’s gorgeous. He makes cookies look like art.” OK, really, you’re probably thinking what I thought, which was “That just looks like a mess of dough splotches.” OK, yes, but covering them with frosting works wonders–so keep reading.

Making the frosting isn’t difficult either. Two things worked against me, though. First, our confectioners’ sugar was a bit old and, thus, slightly clumpy. Second, we got rid of our sifter, which the recipe specifically calls for. So while the frosting did turn out fine, you can see after dipping the cookies in it that there were clumps of chocolate-covered confectioners’ sugar all over.

I also learned that I have a lot of room for improvement with my cookie dipping-and-swirling motion. Oh, and that hot, chocolate frosting burns if you touch it too long. 🙂

The Verdict

Once the cookies were all cooled off and ready to eat, they really did look nice.

But what did everyone think of them? The wife and I both tried them when they were still a bit warm. Each of us thought they were OK, but the dough is actually fluffy and light–not crisp like those cookies I had in Finland. Definitely not a recipe we’d make again.

Something great and unexpected happened, though. When we put the cookies in the refrigerator, and let them sit overnight, they firmed up. They still didn’t have the snap of something like, well, gingersnaps, but much more something you could sink your teeth into. That, combined with the nice hardening of the frosting from the cold, led to a great texture that, in turn, let us appreciate how good they tasted. The verdict at that point, with thumbs up from the boys as well, turned this into a recipe that we will go back to.

I’ll still continue my search for the recipe for those cookies in Finland, but I’m quite happy for now with the Baltimore Berger Cookies. When I make them again, I’m going to try putting them in the freezer before eating them–a suggestion I had forgotten about until I looked back at the Sift article and that they don’t mention on the King Arthur Flour site.

Have a great week!