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Feb. 10, 2010
By Milli Gilbaugh
NORTH LIBERTY LEADER
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| Milli Gilbaugh |
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I baked a batch of our favorite oatmeal cookies the other day. I use the recipe on the oatmeal box, but I add chocolate chips and nutmeats to mine, rather than the recommended raisins. (Not that I don't like raisins, I just like chocolate chips more.) I've baked oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips for so many years, since I was about 10 years old I guess, that I used to be able to throw together a batch without consulting the recipe. I had all the ingredients and measurements permanently recorded in my head, and had looked at the measured ingredients so many hundreds of times that I could almost just "eyeball" them and have the cookies turn out just as expected.
As it happened this time, I hadn't baked cookies for a while and thought it wise to double check the ingredients to be sure I remembered right. While I was thus occupied, I found myself remembering my mother and grandmother tossing together endless batches of cookies, cakes, pancakes, puddings, dumplings, biscuits, corn bread and other frequently-made goodies without benefit of either recipes or standard measuring utensils. And now that I don't have hungry boys hovering near the kitchen like starving hyenas, waiting for the first batch to come out of the oven, I decided to measure everything carefully.
I didn't take this careful measuring so far as to meticulously measure the dollops of dough as I put them on the cookie sheet to bake, but a "rounded tablespoon" seemed a bit small to me, as I like big, generous grandma-size cookies. So, I eyeballed the portions of cookie dough. Oatmeal cookie dough, especially with added nuts and chips, is lumpy and bumpy. Cookies measured in a spoon turn out to be smooth on top after they're baked. I don't like that look - it smacks of a cookie factory where each cookie looks just like all the other cookies. Not at all like homemade. The recipe said it made about four dozen cookies. Imagine my amazement when I ended up with over six dozen!
Granted, I may have added a little extra bulk when I added both nuts and chocolate chips without measuring exactly one cup total as was specified for the raisins, and I used old fashioned oatmeal rather than the quick-cooking variety, but it shouldn't have made THAT much difference.
Later, I was still puzzling over all those extra cookies and remembered that I had been stirring that stiff dough with a big stainless serving spoon - the size my mother and grandmother always referred to as a "tablespoon" and was the generous size that went into the bowl of mashed potatoes to make it easy to get enough when the bowl was passed around at suppertime. I'd always thought that spoon held a lot more than a standard measuring tablespoon - and it certainly does when heaped with a generous serving of stiff mashed potatoes. I'd used that spoon to scoop out the cookie dough - each spoonful enough to make three or four good-sized cookies. And I remembered my home economics teacher admonishing us to resist using ordinary spoons and teacups to measure ingredients. Your tableware is not accurate, she reminded us, while all the measuring utensils have been standardized and so have the recipes in modern cookbooks. With memories of my grandmother measuring sugar in a teacup and salt with a coffee spoon floating around in my head, I decided to check that out once and for all.
Guess what! I have several different sets of dishes and silverware and I checked them all. The teaspoons and tablespoons, when level full, came within a drop or two of holding exactly the same amounts as their standardized namesakes. And the teacups, filled level to the brim, held exactly eight ounces - one standard measuring cup full. Soup spoons and coffee mugs, it seems, can't be relied on as they seem to come in a variety of sizes. I'm slightly chagrined to admit that I may have found the reason I ended up with so many cookies - and after all these years and all those batches of cookies!
I'm not sure just what all this means. Basically, I suppose it means that those standard measurements were based on the "homemade" measurements they are named after. It also means that our mothers and grandmothers weren't too far off after all. And, it means that you should check out your own cups and spoons against your measuring utensils. It may save you time and trouble someday when the kids take your measuring spoons to the sand pile or your only measuring cup is in the dishwasher going through the wash cycle.
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