This morning I was up early and decided that I had time to bake a batch of cookies before meeting my cousins for dim sum at Mark's Duck House. I made peanut butter cookies with chocolate chunks, which is another one of my go-to cookies because it's an easy recipe to make and always produces excellent results. I think it's the combination of honey, old-fashioned oats, and chunky peanut butter that makes the texture of these cookies so irresistible.Anyway, one of the questions I often get from people about my cookies is, how do I get them so round? Part one of the answer is that I always use a cookie scoop. Using a cookie scoop provides many benefits besides producing a perfectly round all of dough. It also ensures that all of your cookies are the same size (and therefore bake at the same rate), and it allows you to consistently produce the same yield from a given recipe (of course, it helps if you keep detailed records like I do of the yield from each recipe each time I make it). Scoops are labeled (look closely -- usually the number is printed on the side of the bowl or on the release bar inside the bowl) with the number of scoops per quart they produce. For instance, a scoop labeled "30" produces 30 scoops per quart. Since a quart contains 64 tablespoons (16 tablespoons to a cup, 4 cups to a quart), a #30 scoop contains a little more than 2 tablespoons. I have an extensive collection of scoops (#12, #16, #20, #24, #30, #40, #50, #60, #70) because well, I like to have a lot of options. But the ones I use the most for drop cookies are #20, #24, and #30. Good sources I've found for some of the less common-sized scoops include Sur La Table, Fante's, and Bridge Kitchenware.
Part two of the answer to getting a round cookie, at least with this recipe, is that I flatten the cookies with my hand before baking them. This is a good idea for some, but not all cookie recipes... if you ever make a drop cookie recipe and aren't satisfied with the amount of spread that occurs during baking, try flattening the dough first. As you can see, the imprint of my fingers remains in the finished cookie after baking, but I don't mind this and think it sort of adds to their homemade charm (and hey, the cookie is nice and round). For me, this recipe yields 24 cookies, made with a #24 scoop. I have always baked these at 325 degrees instead of 350, and they were done in 14 minutes.
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