Doubling and Tripling Recipe Guidelines?
I am going to do some batch cooking this week-end for my pregnant friends. I am going to make lasagna and don't know what the general guidelines would be for doubling or tripling the sauce and cheese mixtures? I'd love to do the sauce in one huge stockpot, but don't know if the spices need to be altered. Here is the recipe. Any advice would be appreciated.
Also, I am going to make several batches of cookie dough to freeze. Can I multiply the recipe to do all at once or is it advisable to do each batch separately.
I agree with the lasagna doubling. Should be no problem. My only problem with doubling is when a dish has a sauce that has to be reduced, or a braise-type dish. Generally you don't need to fully double the liquid when doubling the meat. Dishes that require marinating don't usually need to have the marinade doubled.
I have doubled cookie dough plenty of times, but even my standing mixer wouldn't handle more than 2 batches at once. It's handy to spoon the dough out on your cookie sheets, but freeze them instead of baking. Then you can put all the balls of dough in a freezer bag and have them ready to bake whenever you want, without having to thaw the whole blob.
I make multiple batches of pie crust pastry all the time, and freeze them in disks to be rolled later - no problem.
That's the extent of my experience.
Both the foods you mention are easily doubled or tripled. If you have a stand mixer, it can usually accommodate cookie doughs that make 5-6 dozen, unless you're talking mondo cookies! You can always just do the final addition of flour with a large spatula by hand, if the motor's making noises on a smaller mixer.
If you were making several cake layers or large batches of candy at a time, the chemistry can change. This doesn't apply to cookie doughs, though you'll want to be sure to scrape the bowl after creaming larger amounts of butter, sugar eggs, etc. This is just to be sure everything's well mixed. Here are some good bits of advice for future reference: http://www.baking911.com/howto/recipe... Shirley Corriher and Rose Levy Beranbaum, both mentioned at this site, are good references if your questions aren't answered there.
I frequently double chocolate chip dough recipes using my stand mixer. It isn't big enough for a triple batch though, once the chips are added.
And I suppose you already freeze the dough in balls on a cookie sheet for 2 hours, then put the dough "balls" into a ziploc. A la Debbie Fields.
You can also roll the dough into logs, wrap and freeze; when ready, slice what you need and bake. The logs don't necessarily keep their round shape (they flatten on the resting edge) but it doesn't really matter with most cookies. I save paper towel rolls to put the dough rolls into, to preserve the round shape when freezing, if I need that for a particular cookie style.