This spring, we came across some outstanding cookies from the Island Bakery on the Isle of Mull, their chocolate gingers. The crunch is great. Looking at the ingredients, I saw ammonium carbonate as the leavening they're using. I hadn't heard of ammonium carbonate before and started experimenting a bit, starting from the "Even Less Sweet Version" shortbread variant on this page for Swedish Dream Cookies.
The resulting shortbread cookies were super tender - really good. I did several experiments as I was looking to move toward crunch, including reducing proportion of butter, changing from organic sugar to refined white sugar and upping that proportion, adding a small quantity water to the vanilla when dissolving the ammonium carbonate before adding to the creamed butter/sugar, etc etc. These were based on my discussions (arguments?) with ChatGPT... That's been fun and educational, but I'd welcome some human expertise!!
My main question is: how could I modify this recipe (proportions, temps, etc.), while keeping just these ingredients and just the ammonium carbonate as the leavening, to make the crunchiest possible cookies? I'm also curious about the chemistry and dynamics of how the crumb sets to make crunch via the ammonia bubbles.
Here's what I did most recently, which yielded fair, not fantastic crunch - maybe a little too shortbread-y:
6 tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
65g refined white sugar
130g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp ammonium carbonate
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 tsp water
large pinch salt
1. cream butter and sugar until fluffy
2. dissolve (as much as possible) the ammonium carbonate in the water, add vanilla and salt, stir
3. mix this into the creamed butter/sugar
4. add in flour, all at once.
5. mix with a Dutch dough whisk. (Note: I stopped when the dough was just starting to clump more, but before a coherent ball of dough was formed - not sure if this is one of the issues)
6. make ~1/2" balls and flatten by hand to 1/4" onto parchment-lined sheet (about 16-18 cookies). (Note: the dough wasn't yet coherent enough to roll between my hands into balls, unlike the time I did the shortbread variant, so I just lightly pushed the dough together into the balls.)
7. bake at 300 degrees (regular oven, no convection available) for 28 minutes, just when very light brown starting around the edge of some of the cookies
8. cool on wire rack for 30 minutes.
Thank you!
The resulting shortbread cookies were super tender - really good. I did several experiments as I was looking to move toward crunch, including reducing proportion of butter, changing from organic sugar to refined white sugar and upping that proportion, adding a small quantity water to the vanilla when dissolving the ammonium carbonate before adding to the creamed butter/sugar, etc etc. These were based on my discussions (arguments?) with ChatGPT... That's been fun and educational, but I'd welcome some human expertise!!
My main question is: how could I modify this recipe (proportions, temps, etc.), while keeping just these ingredients and just the ammonium carbonate as the leavening, to make the crunchiest possible cookies? I'm also curious about the chemistry and dynamics of how the crumb sets to make crunch via the ammonia bubbles.
Here's what I did most recently, which yielded fair, not fantastic crunch - maybe a little too shortbread-y:
6 tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
65g refined white sugar
130g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp ammonium carbonate
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 tsp water
large pinch salt
1. cream butter and sugar until fluffy
2. dissolve (as much as possible) the ammonium carbonate in the water, add vanilla and salt, stir
3. mix this into the creamed butter/sugar
4. add in flour, all at once.
5. mix with a Dutch dough whisk. (Note: I stopped when the dough was just starting to clump more, but before a coherent ball of dough was formed - not sure if this is one of the issues)
6. make ~1/2" balls and flatten by hand to 1/4" onto parchment-lined sheet (about 16-18 cookies). (Note: the dough wasn't yet coherent enough to roll between my hands into balls, unlike the time I did the shortbread variant, so I just lightly pushed the dough together into the balls.)
7. bake at 300 degrees (regular oven, no convection available) for 28 minutes, just when very light brown starting around the edge of some of the cookies
8. cool on wire rack for 30 minutes.
Thank you!