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First of all, black baking pans and shiny ones are not alike. Anyone who has worn a black t-shirt on a hot summer day and changed into a white shirt to cool off knows that black is a great absorber of radiant energy, while white makes a good reflector.
In the oven, black baking pans are very efficient at absorbing and transmitting heat. Cookies baking at 350°F on a black or uniformly dark baking sheet are at 350°F top and bottom. Because shiny baking sheets act like the color white and reflect some of the radiant heat, they can be as much as15° cooler, requiring either longer baking time or a boost in oven temperature so that the bottoms of the cookies bake.
This adjustment can throw off a recipe. But shiny pans are not always undesirable. For instance, if you are baking a delicate cookie that tends to burn on the bottom, using a shiny baking sheet will keep the cookie undersides a bit cooler while the tops bake.
In the final analysis, good-quality black baking pans may be better than shiny ones simply because the dark ones are more attuned to the specifications in recipes and will give you the promised results without adjusting baking times or temperatures. If you already have shiny pans, you probably know how to accommodate to them. Be sure to keep shiny pans scoured so they don’t develop dark splotches, which will cause cookies and cakes to bake unevenly.
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I grew up in a cookie-rich household. Every December, even though she worked full time, my mother made at least 10 different kinds of cookies. She’d stack them between layers of wax paper in tins and Tupperware all around the kitchen. My brother and my dad and I knew her hiding places and boldly snitched cookies that had been set aside for a party or for the "girls" at the office. But she always made enough, and when company arrived she could serve a beautiful plate of cookies — cutouts and thumbprints and spritz and many more.
I love baking cookies, as my kids will tell you. I can’t claim to make 10 different kinds each Christmas, though. (How did my mother do that?) Most of my recipes are ones I got from her. But my favorite recipe for gingerbread cutout cookies is one I got from my friend Polly. She thinks she got it from me, but I have the recipe in her handwriting, butter stains and all. My mother would love this cookie. It’s spicy and crisp, and the dough is easy to handle. I hope you will like it too. Enjoy it as the "last bite’ before going to bed during this happy, busy, hopefully peaceful holiday season.
Gingerbread Cutouts
1 cup butter
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
4 teaspoons grated orange peel (from 1 large orange)
2 teaspoons dark corn syrup or maple syrup
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cream the butter and sugar; stir in the egg, orange peel, and corn syrup. Combine dry ingredients and add to the butter mixture. Mix thoroughly. Chill the dough, covered, for about 1 hour. Roll out dough (use about 1/4 of the batch at a time) on a lightly floured board and cut into desired shapes. Bake on cookie sheets at 375°F for 8 to 10 minutes. They will be chewy at 8 minutes, crisp at 10. Cool on racks. Makes about 4 dozen, depending on size of cookie cutters.
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