{"id":940,"date":"2012-05-01T20:44:25","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T00:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/recipephany.com\/?p=940"},"modified":"2023-08-13T17:16:23","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T21:16:23","slug":"fig-brooklines-cookie-clusters-and-the-possibility-of-dark-batter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/recipephany.com\/?p=940","title":{"rendered":"Fig Brooklines, Cookie Clusters, and the Possibility of Dark Batter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Newtonian Physics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I steer away from the cookie aisle, since I prefer to bake, and who knows what’s in those processed things? Yet one packaged cookie always draws me in: the Fig Newton. Crunchy little seeds in moist jam, the tender crumb that doesn\u2019t crumble\u2014all stacked neatly in a sleeve that suggests how many you could (but shouldn\u2019t) eat in one sitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, they could have been called Fig Brooklines. The Kennedy Biscuit Works of Cambridge (a founding bakery of Nabisco) introduced them in 1892 using a new funnel-within-a-funnel technology that formed a continuous tube of dough filled with fig jam. Since the bakery named their products after nearby towns, they called this one Newton. But why not Brookline? Maybe the filling reminded them too much of the Muddy River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wikipedia says handmade fig rolls similar to Newtons originated in ancient Egypt, but that sounds like a figment of somebody\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fig Brooklines<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This recipephany makes a cookie that\u2019s tastier than a Newton with surprisingly little work. Because you can make the filling and dough the night before, it\u2019s easy to assemble and bake them the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During baking, the sliced edges tend to puff up. Other fake Newtons shown online seem to keep their cleanly sliced edges, but I wouldn\u2019t mess with these just to make them look more mass-produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cookie Clusters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I confess, this recipe is a slight modification of ones I found online. Okay, so it\u2019s not highly original. But what is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Michael P. Brenner, professor of applied mathematics at Harvard and expert on the quantitative analysis of baked goods, an original recipe needs to enter uncharted territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned this last week at his sold-out lecture, \u201cThe Science and History of Cookies and Brownies.\u201d I went not just because it sounded like a good name for a chick flick, but because I\u2019d been intrigued by his three-dimensional recipe tetrahedron<\/a> I\u2019d read about in the Boston Globe.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and some assistants analyzed thousands of recipes, then plotted them according to their ratios of four ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs and liquid. In this baking universe, similar recipes cluster together to form what look like galaxies\u2014there’s a brownie galaxy, a sugar cookie galaxy, as well as galaxies for chocolate cakes, angel food cakes, crepes, and so on. This new kind of food pyramid is cute, but it ignores a defining ingredient in desserts\u2014fats. Have you ever tried to make a brownie without fats?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More of a regular dude than a professor, Brenner readily admits he is not a baker. So he also didn\u2019t consider things like leavening agents, techniques, and baking temperatures. But he rightly saw cookies and brownies as a fun arena where he could apply kick-ass data analysis and visualization techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brenner challenged us to explore the white areas of the tetrahedron where there are no plotted recipes. He speculated that there might be totally new concoctions yet to be discovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My husband and I came up with another explanation, and posed this question to him: What if there are already baked goods in that white space, but we just can\u2019t see them? Could these be called \u201cdark batter\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no idea where these fake Newtons might fit in the cookie universe. Nonetheless, they\u2019re stellar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fig Brooklines (Homemade Fig Newtons)<\/span><\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Fig Filling<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n