Thank you, Anne. Yes, there may be an issue with one of my ingredients. I am using a store-brand all-purpose flour. Unsalted butter. McCormick poppyseeds. I will send you a scan of the cookbook page to eliminate any possible mis-typing on my end. If you’re able to send me a private message with an email address, I will send that to you (I understand that we are not supposed to attach recipes here).

Stacia - 28 November 2011 08:26 PM

I stir the flour before dipping and leveling.

This is one issue- I don’t think Rose recommends stirring the flour first.  Her weight measurement for dip and sweep flour is pretty hefty, any aerating or spooning/stirring will not give enough flour.

Another issue is a possibly low protein content of store brand flour.  Protein levels vary from brand to brand and also within a brand from season to season.  Cookies are a very low-moisture environment, and small changes to things like the water content of the butter or the protein content of the flour can make a difference in the cookie.

These two issues together, along with the third detail of flouring your hands for the shaping, could account for flat cookies.

Rose can’t post a change to the recipe unless others are also having the same problem.  Sounds like Anne may try to make these, and if I can find the time this week, I will as well.  It will be interesting to see how they all turn out!

Allow me to start off by saying that my recommendation was for Rose to try her own recipe using volume measurement. I would not expect my word that there may be an error to be taken as fact and at no point did I ask it should be.  I make a LOT of cookies (in the last ten days I have made eight kinds) and as I originally stated, I have never had a reliable recipe ‘not work’. Although it is unlikely that a comedy of errors caused this one recipe to fail twice, it is certainly not impossible.  So, with that in mind, I felt it worth Rose’s time to test the recipe for accuracy when using volume measurement. It is clear that it is not a popular idea that there could be an issue with the published recipe when following the volume measurements. And you know what? Maybe there is not a problem with it.

In future most of you may want to indicate a willingness to try a recipe before intimating that the person experiencing the problem lacks the sense to test their oven temperature, use a set of measuring cups, or know the difference between sifted and non-sifted flour (and by stir, I mean one quick stir, I do not whip a bunch of air in my flour to make it fluffy.). Or assuming that the person with the query is authoritatively demanding that they are correct and want action taken. Yes, I am feeling defensive. Perhaps unnecessarily, but so far only ONE person has offered to try the recipe juuuuuust in case I am not an imbecile.  An ongoing stream of proposed mistakes I’ve made has put me in a position of defense. Yes, it is certainly possible the error was mine both times, but lets find out.

I am sorry I bothered to introduce this subject and would not repeat the mistake if I had the choice of doing it again. The recipe twice provided an unexpected result (I was more than willing to try again because I too assumed that I had perhaps done something the first time). But because it was unexpected and because I consider Beranbaum an expert, I bothered to search for this website in order to discuss it. 

Anne, thank you for offering to test the recipe using the volume measurements. I hope that it turns out exactly as expected and the fault lay entirely with me both times. Your willingness to try it yourself is certainly appreciated. I will send the cookbook photo along with the recipe itself.  I will be looking forward to hearing how it turned out for you.  Until then can everyone suspend their theories on what I did wrong?

Thank you very much.

Hi, Stacia!

Sometimes written words don’t sound as well as spoken ones with faces!

I wasn’t offering to try it juuuuuussttt in case you might not be crackers—quite the opposite, I thought, based upon your responses to the most common possible errors/oversights that there might, indeed, be a problem with the recipe, so I thought I’d give it a whirl (providing nothing comes up this weekend).

Many of the things mentioned to you as potential problems are new to many people (I remember when several were new to me, and I learned about them here)—or at least one—potentially “the” one—could be, and this is a very friendly place—all suggestions are truly made in a spirit of happy baking community.  I’ve been to some snarly forums, so I know how you could feel defensive, for sure, though!

Anyway, I just wanted to say please do share your experiences!  I’m not sure if I’m correct in saying that we’re perhaps more cakey/pie-y/bread-y (I’m almost exclusively cake-y) here or not, but often, more than one person has made a particular recipe and can share direct experience with that exact recipe—sorry it isn’t the case with this one, so we can only guess at the possibles—and perhaps try it ourselves if it’s a real mystery!

You sound like a great baker, and I hope you will stick around, even after the lemon poppyseed debacle!!!

—ak

Hi Stasia,

I have been following this thread and I just made the cookies. I weighed all the ingredients,including egg yolks and lemon zest and the vanilla and my results were very similar to yours, perhaps a little more domed but still quite flat compared to the photo in the book. I am a good baker so I don’t think that’s the problem and I’ve made many of the other recipes in the book with excellent results. I have no answers but I got the same results using weight rather than volume so we can eliminate that as the problem.

Thanks for doing that, Jan.  I was about to try it a third time using weight so I really appreciate your saving me the trouble! I have about a hundred lemon poppyseed cookies in my freezer! Lol!

Hi, Jan!

Thanks from me, too—since you got the exact same results with weighing, I may beg-off from testing myself.  I was planning on making fudge!

Jan, did you flour your hands when rolling the cookies?  Apparently, that’s posted as errata for this cookie.  If so, I hope, that Rose will see this and consider retesting and post errata to specify the amount of flour needed for a cookie to bake as pictured.

Stacia - I have to keep cookies out of my freezer, as I find they eat perfectly well frozen!!

—ak

Hey, Stacia, how awesome would all those flat lemon poppysed cookies be sandwiched with some yummy buttercream?  Lemon?  Vanilla?  Raspberry?  Mmmmmmmmm…...

I’ve made these cookies as well and posted them here:  http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/index_ee.php/forums/viewthread/3982/ 

Hope there may be something helpful there!

Hi Anne,

No I didn’t flour my hands when rolling the cookies because in my edition of the book( it’s at least 20 years old) it says that you need to slightly warm to outside of the cookies so that the nuts will adhere. I did chill them before baking for about 1/2 hour because that sometimes helps them hold their shape.
My cookies were not completely flat. They were like shape” c” in your post. I thought that they looked significantly larger than the ones in the book so I wondered if that was my problem. In any case they are good cookies and my daughter loves them so I am happy.

Take care,

Jan

Hello,

Can you take some photos of the cookies you’ve baked. I think it will be better if we could see your work and give more relevant comments to it. We could also learn from your work.

Thanks

Perhaps it’s not the recipe at fault - maybe they accidentally took the photo of the rolled cookie balls BEFORE they got baked! LOL! Personally (even though I am a rabid perfectionist!) if I am not pleased with the results of a recipe I MAY try it again to see if the result was a fluke - but generally - I will just ditch it and look for a better one (ah - the neverending excuse to buy more magazines, cookbooks and search on-line!!). In Canada our flour is very different, plus the altitude and almost no humidity - these factors combined make a huge impact. I too have even found some Rose recipes that just don’t turn out to my liking. That said - I am searching for a simple, rich crispy slice&bake; version of lemon poppyseeds to serve alongside ice cream/fruit. Stacia, was the quandary ever resolved?

BTW - in my humble opinion and experience - I have checked for interest and dry ingredients measured by volume always end up being far MORE in amount than if I weigh, so I don’t think that was Stacia’s “error”! Now I am going to have to try the darned recipe too - just to see!!
Back to the library I go…

Thanks for your thoughts, kuchen.  Please let us know your results!!!  Ha ha re the photo, too!