Listening to Lynne Rosetto Kaspar on public radio the other day, I was much interested in what she had to say about chocolate chip cookies. That’s because my chocolate chip cookie making ability surprisingly has gone downhill over the years. In particular, it seems I have to add more and more flour to the recipe in order to have cookies that don’t turn into little lumpy chocolate puddles on the cookie sheet.

For years, I thought this was because I live at an altitude above 3,500 feet — but even so, and even adding what seems to be ever more amounts of flour, my cookies are less than what they once were.

Kaspar was commenting about the original Toll House cookie. It seems that when that recipe was recorded, regular flour had more protein in it than today’s version. Her advice for remedying flat and wimpy chocolate chip cookies was to use bread flour, which has more protein. She also suggested refrigerating the dough overnight, which gives the ingredients more time to combine so that a superior cookie is produced.

 Ahah, I thought. This weekend, I made up the cookies using bread flour and refrigerated the dough. I added no extra flour in hopes that Kaspar’s advice would make that unnecessary. Wrong! My first batch of cookies came out puddled up in a most regrettable fashion. After adding the usual 3/4 cup more flour, I was back to square one.

 After being led astray by a nationally known expert, I am returning, properly chastened, to local bakers. What’s the trick to baking cookies that come out just right in terms of consistancy? Do you adjust for altitude? Any suggestions would be humbly appreciated.

By Crystal Hohenthaner
Journal staff

On Saturday nights my father and I usually attempt to make dinner for my mother. I secretly think it is our guilty attempt to make up for the decades of food service she has provided for us. Whatever the reason the result is usually a culinary experiment.

This past Saturday we experimented with the grill. Dad put a new twist on his chicken kabobs with baby bell peppers and I tried my hand at grilling stone fruit. In  my opinion, the experiments were not a success.

First of all the baby bell peppers were an interesting twist. They were a bit more flavorful than regular bell peppers. But the thing about grilling something is that often it can make the flavor more intense. So the baby bells were already more intense and then we intesified the intense on the grill. This made the red ones incredibly sweet — which was interesting, but didn’t go with the chicken — and the yellow ones were actually bitter.

In the future maybe we will marinate the peppers or sautee them slightly before grilling them. But, honestly, I won’t mind if we skip the baby bells altogether from now on.

Okay, grilling the stone fruit was really a whim. What is stone fruit you ask? Well, according to what I’ve heard and seen on the Food Network stone fruit is fruit with a pit — like peaches and plums. My stone-fruit-grilling-whim occured because my mom had just bought plums and dad had the grill on. I had also seen Bobby Flay do it so I thought I’d give it a try.

So I cut the fruit in half, removed the pit, brushed it with olive oil and sat it on the grill for a few minutes. Easy, right? And the result — me no likey. Yeah, my brain really couldn’t handle the idea of a hot, smokey plum. Also, grilling the fruit made it mushier than it was to begin with and my plum had started off quite ripe.

I do think I’ll try grilling stone fruit again, but next time I’ll get some nectarines and maybe apricots in on the action. I also think I will start with some fruit that is a bit underripe. My mom suggested we leave it on the grill longer too — so that the sugars in the fruit maight have a chance to caramelize a bit.

So how about you all? Has anyone had any bad cooking or grilling experiments lately? Or maybe you have an experiment that went right. I’d love to hear all about it.