Why is this Cookie Chewy?

[kjonyou]

I have trying for weeks to make the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Chewy on the inside but slightly crisp on the outside. Not just soft. I read over and over about water, brown sugar and hydroscopic. I read about melting butter, cooled dough, pans and breadflour. I have tried Alton Browns, NY times and several others.

Then I stumble on a simple sugar cookie that has none of that! Its a chewy lime cookie. There are several on the interent but here are the ingredients. How is this cookie so chewy without brown sugar? Its your avrage creaming method, baking temp and time for cookie dough.

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 ½ cups white sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lime zest
3 Tbsp lime juice
½ cup sugar for rolling cookies

By the way, this cookie is delicouse, just a hint of lime, or lemon.

[chowser]

That does sound good like a good cookie. Is it like a regular lime sugar cookie? It looks a little like a snickerdoodle w/ different flavors which I think are chewy cookies, too.

Any cookie can be chewy if you pull it early enough from the oven. My thought would also be that that recipe has a higher flour ratio to sugar/butter, so more protein, added with the extra liquid from the lime juice, would create more gluten for added chew.

[kjonyou]

It is a good cookie, soft and chewy by more like a sugar cookie. I think there are versions in lemon which I want to try next.

I am just learning to bake, still confusing to me. I can fallow a recipe but I want to know how to tweek things and predict what will happen based on what everyone alrady knows.

I get that creaming adds microscopic air bubbles, baking soda and powder are leveners which expand those bubbles, egg yolks add moister, whites stiffener and dryer and fats flavor. Too much sugar, water, butter can make things go flat.

So the flour is adding extra gluten, by how come the extra juice dosent flaten out the cookie?

Is there something about adding an acidic liquid making this different? More acid working with the baking soda?

[chowser]

You have a good understanding already and those are good questions. The extra flour probably absorbs the liquid so it would probably spread w/out. Baking soda is a base and needs an acid to leaven. I highly recommend Shirley Corriher's Bakewise. I found it a wealth of information.

[kjonyou]

Oh, I love her...LOL she dose guest spots on Alton Brown's show and has a professinal background in both baking and chemisty. Didnt think about her books. Will check it out.

[kjonyou]

curiously, minus the lime flavor I found the exact recipe below. They replaced the lime with buttermilk. Can anyone explain? Is the buttermilk working with the baking soda?

Also, can anyone explain why some recipes use both baking soda and powder? I am aware baking soda is in baking powder but why not just one or the other?

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ga...

[ipsedixit]

You need an acid in that cookie recipe.

Without an acid of some sort -- lime juice or buttermilk -- the balance of alkali to acid would be off because that recipe includes both baking soda and powder.

When recipes use buttermilk as an ingredient (or an acid like lime or lemon juice), you want to substitute baking soda for some or all for of the baking powder. Otherwise, you'll throw off the leavening process.