Fair dramz

 

See that title? Dramz? Oh yeah. I'm hip and happening although using the word "dramz" about preparing baked goods for the county fair could be considered a tad oxymoronic, although I'm going for ironic.

With my oven up and running, I got a good start on my annual fair baking and put together my first batch of pie crust dough. I chilled it properly, but when I went to roll it out it was all crumbly and fell apart. So I added more water and set it to chill some more. The same thing happened. I'd read that although you want the butter room temperature for baking, for pie dough, you want it cold when you mix the dough. I'd also noted that using a food processor to cut the butter in is the new thing.

So I went and used Rob's Target birthday card and bought a food processor. I made more dough. It fell apart. I actually rolled it out and tried to put the apples in it, but in the end it was so pathetic-looking with all my patches. So I went for batch No. 3, adding more butter so it would hold together better. I chilled the (blank) out of it.

By this time I was wondering if the whole thing was worth the effort. I decided to make some cookies to clear my head. I had what looked like a great oatmeal cookie recipe -- all butter, oats and goodness -- and made that. But when I cooked them at the temperature called for in the recipe, they burned. I just about threw in the dish towel. But I collected myself, lowered the oven 25 degrees and made eight perfect oatmeal cookies.

I took out the chilled pie dough and rolled it out under wax paper. This is a great solution when the crust is fussy, but can lead to creases in the dough, which are easy to cover with sugar or something. I managed to get the pie put together looking reasonably good, all brushed with cream and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. It cracked while it was cooking, and there isn't much you can do then, but it looked pretty good. The people at the Fair entry place were all encouraging, coming over to say how nice it looked. (FYI, my Big Secret for pie baking is that I'm the best crust crimper, which really sets off a great pie.)

This year's pie is a gamble. My peaches aren't quite ready, which sucks because there are about a million of them. I decided against a peach pie, then, and made an apple pie, using the apples from the Ojai farmers market guy, who gave me a few extra when I told him they were for a county fair pie. They are amazing gala apples that are all crisp and fresh. But apple pie is the most entered pie category, so there's a good chance I could not get a blue ribbon.

The same hubris led to my entering the most popular cookie categories, sugar, oatmeal and chocolate chip. I want to go up against the best and win. But there's a good chance I won't because these things are so subjective. I've judged quite a few cooking contests and know that when you get up to a certain level of cooking the favorite is determined by individual preference.

This is especially true of the chocolate chip cookies. I'd been messing with recipes to get just the right cookie and each batch was disappointing ndespite promises of being gooey and good. I made some cookies for Courtney and Dave and we all agreed they weren't contest-winning calibre. So Courtney and I sat around and discussed what we consider to be our perfect chocolate chip cookie. We like them buttery, soft, chewy and nice and thin, setting off the chocolate chips, which are always Giardelli.

I decided to take the original Tollhouse cookie recipe as my starting point because no matter how much and far you search it's the Tollhouse recipe that is the Gold Standard of chocolate chip recipes. I cut back on the flour by about a quarter of a cup. I cut the baking soda to 1/2 teaspoon because I HATE the taste of baking soda in my cookies and it's very easy to detect if you've used too much. I also cut the temperature back from the 375 degrees called for, which is way too hot. It works best, carefully monitored, around 355 degrees. The resulting cookies are my version of the perfect chocolate chip cookie. But we'll see what the judges think.

The sugar cookies are a recipe that is unusual for a sugar cookie because it has no eggs and lots of cornstarch. They melt in your mouth. But they don't look very good just dropped by spoon and cooked. So I rolled them in balls and rolled the balls in some superfine sugar. This made a really cool-looking round, shiny cookie and the sugar crust gives the cookie an extra sweet crunch. I've tried making traditional cookies the past two years and always got second place, so we'll see how this works.

Rob makes fun of my obsession with the county fair. But, as I pointed out to him, at this point in our lives it is our interests and hobbies that fulfill us and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be recognized for cooking. This year was particularly grueling because along with all the problems with the recipes, my hip and ankle made moving torturous. (I'm going to develop tooth problems if I have to keep gritting my teeth in pain. I have physical therapy and an appointment with a podiatrist this week so I'm hoping for some relief.)

But this morning when I piled the dogs in the car and we set out to enter the stuff, I realized how much I really love walking in the gate amid all the booths and buildings set up to go with the end results of all my hard work. There's always a breeze from the ocean and there's always that delightful sense of anticipation for the fair. No wonder it's one of my favorite things.

UPDATE:
Well, the pie got second place. I figure it must be the crack in the crust that made it less than perfect. Also the apples sat around for a long time before I made it and lost a lot of moisture.
The cookies all got honorable mentions. I HATE honorable mention -- not even good enough to get an actual prize. I really thought these cookies were extraordinary. But as I said it's all so subjective ... sigh. Oh yeah, the cookies I submitted for the fair didn't have edges as dark as in the pictures. Those are the leftover cookies.