Comforting cookies

By Pauline D Loh | China Daily | Updated: 2010-08-28 07:05

A basic biscuit dough is easily put together, and the end result is a healthy, tasty treat for the whole family. Pauline D Loh dusts off the baking sheets.

Delicious cookies are hard to find outside the home, unless you are prepared to pay a premium for that "home-baked" taste. That's why Mrs Fields and her friend Amos do such a roaring business with "free smells" to entice cookie monsters loose on the streets and malls.

Cookies were so much a part of growing up - both for me and my son. For me, graduating from clumpy biscuits and stodgy cakes took a few years of kitchen experiments. As my son, he gradually developed a taste for the gourmet and refused tester duty for my more dubious experiments.

They were very much scientific experiments, of course, and most unforgiving if you did not follow the recipes exactly, or understand the formula behind the recipe.

I think we were both glad when my baking skills improved along with his palate memory.

From the initial sugary experiments slathered with thick indigestible frosting, my cookies are now light as air and range from organic oatmeal sweetened by honey and raisins to light lemon crisps, buttery and melt-in-the-mouth. I have also started making flatbreads, crackers and water biscuits, unsweetened and suitable for the special diets in the family.

Cookies can be delicious and healthy. All you have to do is to understand the proportions and adjust the recipes accordingly.

And, cookies are wonderfully adaptable. Make a basic dough and you can have countless variations by just adding different "garnishing" ingredients like raisins, dried cranberries, cherries, chocolate chips, nuts or even crushed candy. Just remember the basic dough is more like the foundation that holds the biscuit together, and you can actually add too many other ingredients and overload it so it falls apart.

It's the same with the flavoring. Skip the basic vanilla essence and substitute with almond flavoring, lemon, orange or rose. Adding grated lemon or orange zest is also a good way to freshen the taste.

Here are a few different basic doughs to start off your cookie collection. Just remember these ground rules.

1. Preheat the oven, always.

2. Do not crowd the cookies on the baking sheet. You need to give them room to rise or they will clump or stick together.

3. Always allow your cookies to cool thoroughly so they remain crisp in storage.

4. Line your baking trays with parchment paper so you do not have to oil them. Helps save some calories.