The Cookie Dilemma
There is a long standing, though good natured, debate in my family about something very important; whether or not a cookie's shape makes a difference in taste.
You see last night Kristina made cookies, poured the dough into a dish and made a big rectangle of cookies and reminded me of the family debate. It all started when my mom served my dad rectangular cut cookies out of a sheet when my dad was expecting to get round cookies. He complained that he was expecting the taste of the round cookie, and while the cookie "bars" are delicious they are different than the round cookies and not what he was expecting. My mother argued that the taste was identical, shape meant nothing...we children were brought into the argument...and the cookie dilemma has haunted the family ever since.
Now, it is important to note that the argument has nothing to do with whether or not either cookie incarnation is delicious. That they are both tasty is universally accepted. The issue is whether or not the difference in shape corresponds to a difference in taste!
Now, if I remember correctly Joe and I are in dad's camp, insisting that square cookies be properly referred to as "cookie bars", and Anna is in mom's.
So, where do you stand? And what interesting, and good humored, debates have continued within your families?
16 Comments:
Cookie bars are preferable because the square edges allow for small adjustments in size to be made with a knife, without a total cookie committment. Actually, I think that while they are both delicious the texture ends up being slightly different.
In my book they are BARS, although quite yummy still!
okay, sorry, i am the comment queen today, but it can't be helped! i am totally cracking up over here b/cuz this dilema must be genetic in nature. our family also has had a round/sqaure debate. my mom always made sqaure because they were faster. william came home shocked one day from school where he had discovered that cookies COULD be made round. so from then on, when he had a hard day my mom would make round cookies because they took "extra time" to make. i do think they taste different (sorry cathy!) and prefer the bars, just in case you are keeping track for posterity;)
I will also weigh in, no pun intended, on this topic as well. Matching Melanie with today's title of Comment King, work is slow. This debate has also reached my families dinner table as well. Though there are pluses and minuses to both designs; square allows for taking small tastes as one walks by the plate without having to commit to the calorie intake of an entire cookie… Shelley was alluding to this in her comment as well. I have also discovered, always after it is too late, that this method is very ineffective in reducing ones confection intake. I think it is a trick we all play on ourselves, believing that we are not eating as much, when in reality you end up consuming more... Although, there is exercise involved with multiple trips to the kitchen... I digress; this could be a whole new topic. Anyway, I would say that there definitely is a taste difference; I believe the difference stems from the amount of pastry taken in with each bite. When you take a bite of a bar, you are getting a lot more cookie per bite. I find the amount you intake can change the taste while chewing, more is not always better. A cookie has a different design, it starts off thinner at its edges, and you get more in the middle, kind of like a flattened Hershey's Kiss. When food is being chewed, digestion begins; saliva reacts and forms the flavors that you taste. When there is more cookie, there is less saliva, altering the flavor. I remember cookies that were made by my sister, who added too much of something, and they ended up being overly thick, like little cakes; tasted completely different. So to make a long story short, I agree, bars are different, but maybe if you regulate the amount you intake, it might taste closer to the round cookie... but I don't think that is possible.
So "Mezo",
Which one do you like best??
I think the round ones taste better, but always made the bars, cuz I had 7 kids staring at me wanting COOKIES!!!When William realized that cookies came in a round form, I think he thought I'd been tricking him all those years!
LOL, i think i should point out that jonathan's about a paragraph or two PAST making a long story short...but thank you for the refresher science lesson about the intricicies of the digestive system.
hmmm, maybe my taste buds aren't very discriminatory, but all I taste, whether round or square, is the chocolatey goodness and sweet sugary delight of cookies...
ben and i have an ongoing good humored food war over whether or not soaking eggs in warm water before they're cracked, beaten, and scrambled (wow, sounds kind of violent) make them fluffy or not. i personally think any prep work just slows me down and i don't notice a difference, but he's convinced it makes his eggs fluffy and thinks it's worth the time and effort. ah well. for father's day and his birthday i soak the eggs just for him. it's the small things that keep a marriage afloat, ya know?
Soaking eggs before cooking? I'm with you on that one Steph, why add the extra step for something that doesn't make sense. (I propose that you try an experiment. Do it both ways and then have Ben do a blind taste test. He should be able to correctly determine the one that has been soaked.)
OK...so, they may have the same ingredients...but they are TOTALLY different...not only do they have to bake at a different temps., they also have a different texture because of differing surface areas...it's like the end cut on a loaf of bread...it's baked all over on one side (like a round cookie)...people tend to forego the end pieces to get to the soft chewy middle bread slices (like the cookie bars)...unless you are like my mother who insists the end cuts are better...but never did she have the audacity to assert the argument that they were the SAME tasting...that's ridiculous...
Here! Here!
On the whole, I like cookies better than bars.
Now, here's a tougher debate. Is a "square pizza" a pizza or must it be round? Is there a taste difference?
I fand the pizza debate to be quite similar to the cookie debate. There is cleary a taste difference, and thus there needs to be a different term to denote the modification from the base "pizza" expectation.
Examples would be Pizza al taglio , Detroit-style Pizza and Sicilian-style Pizza
...mmm...pizza...
I would have to agree with Alan in regards to the different styles of pizza. Some have thicker crusts, like the square slices, which in turn has more bread per bite. Which ties back into my original argument of the square cookies bars. I think Eric and Aimei Phillips summed it up well when he brought up the whole baking process. When the dough is allowed to rise too much, it alters the taste. I am a purist, I say keep it traditional... though my arguments seem to favor round food over square; pizza is round, unless it is baked to be cut into squares. Can anyone else think of foods that are round that can be altered into squares… which in turn alters the taste in a negative way?
well, i have exhausted my brain to the point of pain to think if there are any other foods that would be altered by round or square and i've come to the conclusion that it is only cookies and pizza! i totally agree with the different types of pizza argument. i argued with a new yorker once about the superiority of chicago over new york style. please, it's not even close!
And who would have thought that my making cookies would have sparked such a heated debate? Oh, excuse me - cookie bars!
Cookie bars taste different than cookies. It bakes differently in one large mass.
I have also heard people claim that torn bread tastes different than cut bread, as in tearing a hunk of bread off a loaf of french bread as opposed to cutting off a slice.
The shape of the cookie definitely makes a difference. The thickness of the cookie determines whether it would taste best as a round or a square dessert. If the cookie is less than 5/16” thick it will taste best if it is round; however; if a cookie is thicker than 5/16” it will taste best as a rectangle; however; I must warn it will be somewhat of a disappointment if it is not called a bar.
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