Paris Cookie Failure

The moral of this story is.....
"If you want to make American cookies, bring American ingredients to France."


Failed Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Kate has been craving oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  In the past, when we've come to Paris for several months, I have put brown sugar, vanilla, baking powder, chocolate chips, karo syrup and other ingredients in my suitcase that are different or difficult to find in Paris.  But this time, since we were only coming for a month, I just casually threw in some chocolate chips and didn't pay attention to the rest.

 

Even the flour is different in Paris.  It is finer like cake flour in the US and has less gluten.  And there is no sticky brown sugar--just unrefined brownish coarse granulated sugar called sucre cassonade that the French use to sweeten coffee. 

Sucre Cassonade

This is not like American brown sugar

Our recipe called for baking powder, which posed another challenge.  I had never tried to buy baking powder in Paris so I looked it up on the internet to see what it is called.  It said to buy levure chimique--chemical yeast.  I went to Carrefour City across the street to see if I could find the French sucre cassonade and levure chimique and was happy to find both on the baking shelf.  I could satisfy Kate's cookie craving!


Levure Chimique

We got everything mixed up--at least we only did a half batch.

The doomed cookie dough

Kate started to lick the beaters.  Then suddenly she starting gagging and said her throat was burning.  She made me take a little taste.  She was right!  This was not good batter.

She quickly grabbed a couple of squares of a Milka chocolate bar to get that taste out of her mouth.  (Milka chocolate will fix anything!)  We tried cooking a few cookies to see what would happen but they were awful.  They didn't look right or taste right.  Kelly said they burned his mouth with a chemical burn when he took a little bite.  When we looked at the batter again, it had risen higher and still tasted awful.

So the batter went into the garbage and Kate was very disappointed.  I think we probably put in too much levure chimique.  It must be stronger in France than the baking powder in the US.

Next time, if we want American cookies, we'll make sure we bring American ingredients.  It is safer and tastier to just stick to the French pastries down the street at our boulangerie.  Or at the new cookie store on the rue Cler that sells them at exorbitant prices.

Kelly at the rue Cler cookie store