Meanwhile, at the most ridiculously named hotel ever…
The first serious kitchen job I had (as in - I had actual responsibilities) was in a Hotel in Baltimore. It was basically a pantry gig, except I got all the fancy titles - Garde Manger, Patissier, anything I asked for really. Unfortunately I was still making 8 and a half bucks an hour and maybe getting 25 hours a week. The restaurant was more of an afterthought - an excuse to charge more for the rooms. When I worked there the current incarnation was a “fresh and organic” restaurant. This was still something of a novelty in Baltimore in 2004, but it went out the window after the first couple of months once people stopped coming in, slowly at first but once we were down to 2 to 4 tables a night, it was pretty obvious why we were down there.
To make sure the hotel got some use out of us, they encouraged us to come up with a daily snack. Of course, this gave the other employees and me a wonderful opportunity to experiment with the ingredients we had - every week there was a new gimmick; either new specials for the restaurant, or some sort of snack for the guests. We sent up Giardiniera for a bit - but it turns out not all that many people want a room temperature bowl of vinegary cauliflower and peppers when they check into their room. For a bit we did roasted chestnuts - they cost a lot, go bad quickly, and about five people in the country know that you’re supposed to eat them. Popcorn was pretty popular for a while, but what wound up being the longest running of these was a chewy oatmeal-apple-cinnamon cookie.
They might still be serving them, I don’t know…
What I do know is that getting these cookies to be the favorite of the management was pretty much an exercise in frustration and failure. The first time we made it we tried using fresh apples - the cookies spread into a flat mess. We tried cooking the apples - thinking that would dissolve off some of the liquid - that kind of made it worse. Eventually the Executive Chef got the idea to just order some dried apples. The dried apples worked - so the chef got the idea to roll the cookie dough up and freeze it - so we could cut cookies off and bake them whenever we needed them. This kind of sort of resulted in us having irregularly cut, overcooked, tiny cookies that no one liked. So we just made a big batch at a time and cook them at a lower temperature for a shorter time period. That worked, but the prep time took so long in terms of weighing everything; so that was a pain in the ass when we were in a rush. So FINALLY we just used a portion scoop, nice and simple… but yeah, if you managed to follow that we basically spent 2 months trying to get these things right - so take note: chefs can fuck up over and over, too - especially when trying out a new recipe.
but here’s what you came for:
The Ingredients:
Just a side note - if you follow the amounts in this recipe you will make a fuckton of cookies. Convert it down smaller if you only want to make a few to try. Or make the whole batch, I guess, if you’ve got a bake sale or something coming up… or if you just really really like cookies.
3 Lbs Butter
4.5 C. Granulated Sugar
4 C. Brown Sugar (1 32 oz. bag)
2 Tbsp Vanilla
12 C. Rolled Oats (Oatmeal - not instant)
6 C. Flour
3 Teaspoons Salt
6 C. Dried Apples
¼ C. Cinnamon Sugar
The Process:
1) Cream together the Butter, the Granulated Sugar and the Brown Sugar using the electric mixer.
2) Sift the flour into a separate mixing bowl. Add the Rolled Oats, Salt, and Dried Apples.
3) Combine the Eggs and Vanilla in an other mixing bowl.
4) In the electric mixer, add the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients to the butter and sugar. Do this by alternating the dry and wet ingredients - add some of the dry then some of the wet, then more of the dry, more of the wet…
… you get where I’m going with this. This process makes sure the ingredients are evenly distributed.
5) Portion out the cookies by scooping them onto a parchment lined sheet tray. Make sure you leave enough room for the cookies to spread.
6) Bake at 300 degrees until the edges turn golden brown (10-15 minutes, depending)
7) Remove, allow to cool before removing from tray. The cookies should remain soft and chewy.
The point of allowing the cookies to cool is so they continue the baking process and settle to a point where you can actually pick them up without breaking up
8) Get dressed and dance the night away.
As for the hotel - they wound up opening a new restaurant in the same place after the crew I was with got fed up and all quit. Did the same thing a couple of years later, and again after that - not really surprising, all things considered.
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