Timeless Classic Cookies Reimagined - America's Test Kitchen - The New Cookie book - Stephanie Pixley Interview

Want to make some cookie magic this upcoming baking season and create some buzz?

This time on Food for Body, Mind and Spirit we’re exploring Timeless Classic Cookies Reimagined, and it seems to me, America’s Test Kitchen has been having a fun time creating the go-to resource we all need now.
I sat down (virtually) with Stephanie Pixley, deputy food editor of ATK’s books team, and culinary producer of Cook’s Country. She’s the kind of person who lights up talking about baking projects, and she walked me through The New Cookie, their brand-new collection that takes everything we love about traditional cookies and gives them a fresh, modern glow-up.

Visit the Gloria Goodtaste's website to view the full stories and available recipes highlighted in this podcast with pictures and additional info to further enjoy this episode.  Go to: https://www.gloriagoodtaste.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hey everybody, welcome back to Food for Body, Mind, and Spirit. I'm your co-host, Gloria Goodkate, and we sure hope that you enjoy exploring food and fun with us here today.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

We got the coffee pork and our cookie cheese prepared. Alright, ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Well, today we are doing something that feels like just pure kitchen magic for the upcoming vacant season. The thing is timeless classic cookies rematch. Okay. Um before we hit that play on the interview, can you just talk about definitely for a second? Because the energy is just right. Exactly. Definitely food editor on the book team. Figuring out how to get that perfect tool or that key roll up for cook petrified how to make techniques feel doable for all cooks.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

I love that America that's such an approach. I tell you why. Everything we love about the classics.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Stephanie is so generous with the stories behind the recipe. You're going to hear it. She likes them talking about these projects. All right. Without further ado now, here's my conversation with Stephanie Pixley of America's Test Kitchen.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I'm talking to Stephanie Pixley, Deputy Food Editor of America's Test Kitchen book team and culinary producer of Cook's Country TV show.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Well, I want to really tell you how thrilled I am to be talking to you today.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Oh, I'm so glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Okay, and we're gonna start by telling and introducing you to everybody else and a little bit about you first. So can you tell us a little bit about how you ended up in a culinary career?

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Yeah, I'd love to. Well, um, like many people who work in food, I grew up with a mom that loved to cook, and that instilled that love in me. Um I grew up wanting to experiment in the kitchen, I always wanted to help her, and I always wanted to do my own baking projects on the weekends. I would go over to my friend's house, and I have a distinct memory of trying to make chocolate chip cookies with a friend, but not following a recipe. And I can't say they turned out very well, but it was a fun experience. I still remember it. I love to do that kind of thing. So it was sort of like meant to be in some ways, I think. Um, I ended up going to culinary school. I did my bachelor's degree, um, and then afterwards went to culinary school in Vermont at New England Culinary Institute and decided I really didn't like working in restaurants, which was a real bummer for me to realize after culinary school. But was lucky enough to know about America's Pet Kitchen, Cooks Illustrated Magazine, and ended up getting an internship there, and ended up weasling my way into a full-time gig that I managed to hang on to all this time.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Now, did you did you ever imagine yourself really testing recipes though?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

No, absolutely not. No, definitely not. I mean, that was something that like wasn't I didn't even think of as a possibility for a job or like for a company like that to exist. It didn't enter my thought process. No, do you it's just I knew I liked it.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Do you actually do your baking and your cooking at home too when you go home? I mean, are you like caramel or is home?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

I I do. I love I love food. I love cooking. Um baking is still my my de-stressor on the weekends. It's the thing I like to do now I have a kid, and I like bringing her into the baking experience and learning about science and I I really still do love to cook every every day.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Well, now, taking a look at your new cookbook, the new cookie book from America's Test Kitchen uses really exciting creative takes on classical recipes, right? Now, how was that idea born? I mean, that is such a great idea.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Oh, yeah. Well, I think cookies are such a great entry point for baking projects for people. They're fast. You know, unlike a cake, you really don't even need to let them cool before you dive in. Uh-huh. Really, people have the ingredients they need at home to make a cookie of some kind. Um, and but you can have so much fun with creativity, with flavors and techniques and stir-ins to make cookies super modern and interesting beyond just the classics that we all know and love.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Well, I know that social media, they promote a lot of really unique ideas, even with cookies. But their recipes many times don't work. I know that also.

unknown 6:48

It's disappointing.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

How does America's Test Kitchen really create trendy recipes that are actually going to work in my kitchen?

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Yeah, we spend a lot of time failing in the test kitchen. That's one of the things that we do most, honestly, is failure. Um, we tend to have a lot of really great creative ideas that sound good on paper, but when we test them right off the bat, they don't work the way that we want. And we're obsessive at American Test Kitchen. We test recipes over and over and over again until they're exactly how we want them to be. We don't take uh path measures, we want it to be exactly the way we had in our minds, we want it to taste delicious, but we also want it to be able to be replicable for the home cook. So we make sure that we're using ingredients that a home cook uses, we're using equipment that a home cook uses, and thinking through how a home cook might approach a recipe and what questions they might have.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Now, are these recipes actually tested by somebody else other than you?

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Yes, uh, so I'm just one member of a team of cooks that cooks through these recipes. So there were there was a group of, I think it was five or six test cooks that were actually developing the recipes for this book. So my role was guiding test cooks, troubleshooting, helping them problem solve with recipe development. Baking is really hard, it's a science, and you have to have a really good foundational understanding of how baking works and how small changes to ingredients might impact the overall bake in order to develop a real, really good cookie. And that takes a real team to get there. So it was a real group effort. A lot of Tesco work went into this book.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Now, as you were testing the recipes, was there anything that really surprised you?

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Oh, I'm always surprised by the recipes. I mean, I think um I think that honestly, the maybe the biggest surprise, so this is not a small collection of recipes. There's a lot of really, really great cookies in this book. I think I think that one of the biggest surprises for me was that I was still sad at the end of this project that I didn't get to eat more cookies. I really didn't want it to end. It was delicious. Um we really spent so much time working on creating such a good mix of textured cookies, flavors of cookies, that um I think on a day-to-day basis, you will find any kind of cookie that you want in this cook because it's so satisfying.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Now, what's the best recipe really for a beginner cook, though?

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Well, I would say the best recipe for a beginner cook is probably one that doesn't use a lot of fancy equipment, right? Like if you're a beginner cook, maybe you don't have a stand mixer, you probably don't have a food processor, and there are a lot of great cookie recipes that are beginner friendly. I think we have a classic recipe in our archives, the perfect chocolate chip cookie. It's a very chewy chocolate chip cookie that is that iconic hallmark. I think that that's a really great place to start. It just requires a couple of bowls, um, whisk, a spatula, and a skillet to brown some butter. So you don't need to pull out any special equipment. It doesn't call for any hard-to-find ingredients, it's just regular all-purpose flour, baking soda, unsalted butter, sugar, chocolate, eggs. So um it's that's a really great one to start with.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

It that sounds like a great one to start with. Well, what kinds of cookies are really included in the book? There, so there's different kinds. What are the kinds that are featured? Yeah, bar cookies or uh other cookies like that. Are there different kinds of cookies, roll cookies?

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Or is it yeah, every kind of cookie. And there's actually a lot of bars in this book as well. I think uh we think of bars like brownies or blondies as in the same uh category as cookies because they really like satisfy the same craving, they're easy to make, that sort of thing. So there's every kind of cooking here. So there's drop cookies, um, the the book is organized by texture essentially, by chapter. First chapter is chewy and gooey, the second chapter is fully loaded. So those are kind of those really to the max flavorful cookies. So we have a um uh uh we have a Moores cookie there, we also have a brown butter halva crunch cookie in that chapter. So those are kind of like the bigger, chewyer style cookies. We have stuffed cookies, we have ice cream sandwich cookies, crispy, crunchy cookies, cakey cookies, um Windsor cookies, so there's Christmas style cookies in here. We have an amazing triple citrus gingerbread cookie with white chocolate. We have Oreo copycat recipes. We have I mean, Scotty, every single cookie that you could ever want is in this book.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Wow, that's a lot of different kinds.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yes, there are, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Well, now as you were testing the recipes, were there any unexpected flavors that you experienced?

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Absolutely, yeah. I think that we um we had a lot of fun with freeze-dried fruit. Um, do you know what freeze-dried fruit is?

unknown 12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Yeah, so it's pretty available now at grocery stores, and and it's a really great ingredient to play around with with cookies because unlike fresh fruit, freeze-dried fruit has all of the moisture evaporated out of it. So it's a super hyper-concentrated flavor of that fruit. And it's unlike fresh fruit because it doesn't have that moisture in it, it doesn't affect the texture of your cookie. So we had a lot of fun grinding freeze-dried fruit and using it as a coating for some cookies. So that's, you know, you just it's a simple butter cookie dough that you press your thumb into and usually fill with jam. But there's means we rolled that cookie in a freeze-dried raspberry and put a little lemon curd in the in the center, and it just added so much flavor, but also color. That was a really, really fun and surprising ingredient to work with.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

That's nice. That sounds like a great flavor combination.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Yeah. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Well, how how do you give cookies really f big flavor? So if I have a cookie and it's kind of bland, what could I do with that recipe to give it big flavor?

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Well, I I'm a big proponent of salt in sweet recipes. I think salt goes a long way to wake up flavors overall. And I think sometimes people think about baking recipes as only relying on sweet ingredients. But salt really does an amazing job of amplifying all your all the flavors in your recipes. So um, I would look at the amount of salt that you're using. I would also consider browning butter. Brown butter is like one of those classic techniques that is a classic for a reason. If you're using melted butter in your cookie recipe, trying to well brown it, you're gonna add an extra layer of butterscotch flavor. That's just gonna amp up the flavor of your cookie.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

That sounds like a great thing to do. I I love the idea of putting some of the brown butter in there. That's really really super. You know, a lot of recipes to call for chilling cookie dough. And, you know, people really don't understand why it's important. Is it important really to chill the cookie dough?

SPEAKER_02 14:56

It depends on what you're after, actually. I think that sometimes um we might chill cookie dough for a few different reasons. Sometimes it's because the dough is really sticky and hard to work with. So we have this one iconic recipe in our book, uh chocolate crinkle cooking, which uses a lot of melted chocolate in it. There's melted butter as well, so it's a pretty soft and messy dough. But putting that dough in the refrigerator for just 30 minutes helps to hydrate the starches and it burns up that dough a little bit so that it's way easier to work with. On the other hand, you might be after a fudgy style cookie, and you might find that the cookie, your first batch of cookies that you make, they spread a bit more than you wanted, and they end up with crispy edges and a chewy interior when what you really wanted was like a big, thick, fudgy cookie. And we found that actually chilling that dough helps to prevent the spread. It hydrates the starches again, and it prevents the cookie from spreading as much in the oven, and you end up with a smaller but taller cookie that has a fudgier center. So it can change the texture of your cookie too. So you don't have to chill your cookie necessarily. Sometimes it's functional, but sometimes it's also a bonus textural additive.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Mm-hmm. Well, I know some recipes also tell you to bang your cookie sheet.

unknown 16:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

And I mean, I wondered why I want to bang my cookie sheet.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

I know. Um, I know about that the pan banging technique. I think that that's a really funny uh creative uh way to add a different look to your cookie and a little texture. So what happens is when your cookie is baking in the oven, it's still very soft. It's still pretty hot, right? Right. Um if you've ever taken a cookie out of the oven and like poked it a little bit to see if it was hard and left a fingerprint, you know that a cookie at that stage can really change the way it looks. The technique with the pan banging, I think, is that you take the cookies out of the oven and you bang the pan on the counter really firmly a few times and it kind of causes the cookie to collapse on itself. You end up with these like wrinkly edges. We we refer to it in our book as the Sharpe effect, like the dog with a wrinkly like neck kind of. Um, that's one way to achieve that. We did find that you can actually achieve that without any physical banking or anything, but instead by focusing on the type of an amount of leather that you're using in the cookie, baking soda causes cookies to spread, and if you increase the amount of baking soda, you get a more aggressive spread. Chilling also helps to achieve that texture by allowing a secondary melt to happen when it's in the oven. So there's a few different ways of going on it. You definitely do not setting your hands on the counter though. Your cookies will still taste great without that.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Thank you. That's nice to know.

unknown 18:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Now, you know, we and our family make lots of Eastern European sweet treats really around the holidays. Did you include any cultural family favorite recipes and flavors of those in your recipes for cookies?

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Those are always so near and dear to our hearts for sure. I think that um there's a lot of those family recipes that, you know, you would never, well, you might try someone else's recipe, but it's never gonna taste the same either, right? But I think we did try to incorporate some of those throughout. Um hermit cookies are kind of a classic. We're based in Boston, and hermits are such an old school New England style cookie. We did have to give it our own little twist, though. We turned them into pumpkin spice hermits. Those were delicious. Um, I think we also have a really, really delicious cookie called a mumble, which is like a date-stuffed cookie. It's beautiful, it's tender, it's a little bit cakey. Um, we have a few of those, really classic. The other is um is uh iced espresso oatmeal crunches. Those are those um in the grocery store. You can find these little crunchy oatmeal cookies that have a glaze to them. So this is kind of like an old school nostalgic style oatmeal cookie that we wanted to include as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Mm-hmm. Now I noticed that one of the recipes when I was looking at the book uses something called UBE. Ubi? What is that? Yeah. I mean, people are going to go to the store and say, what is that?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah, ube is really fun. It's um we have an ube krinkle cookie, which is um actually a purple yam, so like a starchy root vegetable. It's known as Filipino ube. It's most commonly used in Southeast Asian cooking. You can find ube extract, um a jam, and we ended up using a jam. It just and an extract in our cookies, and it adds this like beautiful purple color and like kind of a uh earthy, sweet, nutty kind of aroma to the cookie. It's a really fun ingredient to play around with.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

I'm anxious to try that one.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

It's really fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Well, what are the mistakes that many people make when they bake cookies?

SPEAKER_02 20:39

Um I think that one of the biggest mistakes people make is not knowing when cookies are done. I think people tend to over bake cookies, in my opinion, because they are looking for um like golden brown all throughout and are looking for like a set-looking cookie when it comes out of the oven. I think there's uh are you familiar with carryover cooking when you're cooking protein service?

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

So the same thing happens with cookies, actually. When you take a tray of cookies out of the oven to cool on a fire rack, those cookies are really, really hot and they actually continue to cook a little bit as they sit on the countertop. So we found that you actually want to pull for like a nice chewy texture cookie. You want to pull those cookies out when the dough still looks fairly raw in between the cracks, that as it sits and cools, it will continue to set and it will end up the perfect texture. I think people tend to over bake them slightly because they do look a little raw still. So going by timing and the golden brown around the exterior, not just the center of the cookies, the thing to look for.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Oh, great hits. All right. Well, now I know you must have some showstopper cookies in this book, right? Can you tell?

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Interpretation. Really intelligent flavor. We choose the chocolate. We ended up getting pairs of chocolate from the grocery. We really like chocolate chocolate. It's like really indulgent looking. And then you sprinkle sea salt on top. That was one of my favorites. It was one that I really could not get enough of. I loved that.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

It sounds delicious.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

It really was.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Well, you know, is it really important when how you mix a cookie? Or can I just throw all the stuff in the bowl and, you know, kind of hope that it turns out? Or is there you know, like following directions? Is that really important?

SPEAKER_02 23:33

It really is. Yeah, it is important to follow the directions. I think in order to achieve the texture that the recipe is trying to achieve, you really do need to follow the instructions. It's really important that the recipe says that the butter should be softened, that the butter is actually softened. If the butter should be browned, it should be browned and not melted. If the recipe calls to risk everything together, that's how it should be combined. If you then put it in the sand mixer, it's going to turn out very different. The mixing method is just as important as the ingredients that you use and how you measure them, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Well, I have one special, special question. What cookie recipes in this book do you think I should try first? I know that's a hard one.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

What kind of a cookie do you like? Are you a chocolate lover? Do you like a chocolate? I love everything.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

I love everything.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

Everything. Okay. And now that makes it hard to try the salted, salted chocolate chunk cookies. They're very indulgent. They're so delicious. If you want a crisp cookie, so delicious. There's a crispy caramel drizzle. And then I think if you want a crispy crunchy cookie, I would try that ice espresso oatmeal crunchy cookie. That one is so good with coffee or tea, and it lasts for me. So it's good to share. That's a great one too.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Well, I want to thank you so much. This has been absolutely wonderful. And I know I know your book is going to be tremendously successful, and the recipes are absolutely adorable.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

After that inspiring chat, are you ready to bake a little differently? I bake differently every time I bake. How about that?

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yeah, it's funny. Well, anyway, and now everybody, just listen to our lineup of recipes that America's Test Kitchen shared with us. Three special recipes, and I'm craving them already. First up is the triple citrus gingerbread cookies with that bright lemon lime orange lip and a sleek two-tone white chocolate dip. Can you believe that one, Tom?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Yes. Then brown sugar milk tea cookies. Basically your favorite bubble tea shop in a cookie form. Chewy, rich, black tea scented.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Everybody loves the bubble tea, right? And the deep violet rube crinkle cookies with those irresistible chewy fudgy centers. You can practically see the purple yam magic happening. And the milk tea cookie, mmm, infusing the butter with actual tea leaves so that the flavor actually shows up. That's the kind of detail that makes you go, oh, and that's why mine never tasted quite like the bubble shop, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Plus the Ubi. Using both extract and haleia jam, you get the color and a dust dense fudgy metal. Genius! Whee! Okay, Gloria, first reaction. Which one you are baking this weekend?

SPEAKER_01 27:27

Well, I'm torn, but those citrus, triple citrus gingerbread cookies with the two-tone white chocolate dip, mmm, that's pretty tempting. The way she described the bright citrus cutting through the spices, and then the white chocolates tempering the punch.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

I'm heading straight for the brown sugar tea ones. Infusing butter with the tea leaves. That's the kind of a tech tip I live for. And the molasses in the dark brown sugar base for that deep Taiwanized sugar vibe. Chewy heaven!

SPEAKER_01 28:15

And we can't ignore the Ubeg Crinkles. I love that idea. Deep violet, chewy, crisp edges, dense, soft center, plus that earthy, sweet, nutty aroma. Perfect for anyone who wants something that looks as exciting as it tastes.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

What I appreciate most is how approachable they made everything. Even if you've never worked with Ubi Halaya or infused butter before, she walks you through like a friend in the kitchen.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Exactly. These aren't the kind of look-at-me complicated recipes. They're classics that got a thoughtful modern update so they feel special again.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

So if you're listening and your baking is calling, grab the new cookie book from America's Test Cooking. Those three are just sneak peek recipes. There's a whole collection of reimagined flavors waiting for you.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

And hey, if you bake any of them, make sure you tag us. We want to see your two-tone dips, your purple crinkles, and your milk tea glasses. Well, share that cookie magic.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Body, mind, and spirit, fully fueled by warm cookies and good conversation. That's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Thanks so much for chilling with us today, everybody. I'm Gloria. Good taste.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

And I'm Tech Tom. Until next time. Remember, always put a little good taste in your eye.