Confectioners for granulated sugar isn't a straight swap. But it also shouldn't be substituted.

Did you use AP flour? I agree with the frustrations of flour measurements and is why I like to stick with recipes that have measurements unless it's one I'll make a lot and am willing to fiddle with.

But the sugar swap is probably your biggest problem.

^I agree with the comments here. Subbing powdered sugar for granulated could be part of the problem. For one thing, powdered sugar contains cornstarch that can absorb more moisture. It can also result in a more tender cookie. The egg issue you mentioned shouldn't matter. The exta cocoa you added could factor in, too. Best to follow the recipe as written the first time. It's not that you can't make successful tweaks, but that can come with experience.

I agree that the cornstarch in the powdered sugar can dry it out. I subbed a bit of confectioners sugar once when I did not have enough regular sugar. Cookies were crisper than normal. Tasted good, just

I have nothing substantial to add but to reiterate, prepare the recipe as written at least the first time. As I tell DD, baking is science. Don’t mess with the recipe until you know what you are doing.

I do agree with the others, but will add some things. There isn't a whole lot of cornstarch in powdered sugar--and you can buy kinds that don't have it--but sugar bakes like a liquid but starts out needing liquid to dissolve in (there's water in butter), and gets more complicated from there. You get a lot more sugar in a cup of powdered than in a cup of granulated. The latter has a lot of airspace between the crystals. More sugar could have thrown off the balance, for sure, and could have contributed to the dryness of the dough. Confectioner's sugar is pulverized granulated sugar. There's no way it's going to add whiteness unless it's sprinkled on top.

If your regular sugar were raw or brown, confectioner's would be whiter, but only because it doesn't carry color--it won't make the dough white. The egg yolks, butter and vanilla (if any) make it beige/yellow. Some "white" flour is also beige to yellow. White white flour has been bleached. There's something called "white vanilla" or "clear vanilla" which is imitation vanilla that doesn't have color. Some cows that don't eat grass give whitish butter. Top quality lard is white, as is vegetable shortening (e.g., Crisco). Different fats bake differently and end up with different mouthfeel, but you can change. The yellowest thing is the least replaceable, which is the yolks. They're less essential than the whites, but they do their job. All of the good substitutes are darker than the yolks. Some eggs have much darker yolks than others, part genetic and part what they eat.

Yes, it matters if you threw away a lot of the eggwhite. Were you using extra large eggs, with some to spare? Most recipes call for large. A drop or two doesn't matter, either way, but the eggwhites count as liquid and glue, as well as providing loft. Do try to get all of the egg into the recipe. But, no, you don't have to scrape the inside of the shell. If more than a drop or two are clinging inside the shell, your eggs may be too cold or too old (and beginning to dry out). It's best to mix baking ingredients--including the eggs, butter and milk--which have been allowed to come to room temperature.

The first step in both cookies and cakes is usually to beat the butter and sugar together until smooth and lighter in color. You're beating in air (which is why the color lightens). You're also dissolving the sugar and distributing it well. This works better at room temperature. Eggs at room temperature mix better and hold air better.

Good cocoa powder has a lot of fat in it. Fat gives you pliability, though, of course, you need liquid as well.

Scanting the flour doesn't help. Having too little flour can make cookies brittle. Measuring flour by volume must be done correctly. First, you need accurate measuring cups. If you don't sift the flour, it should be in a wide opening canister--don't shake it down!--using a small enough measuring cup that you can easily maneuver. Use a spatula or butter knife to level off without packing down the flour. If you're measuring out of the bag or a narrow topped canister, use a large spoon to lift the flour out and fill the measuring cup--again, not tamping it down at all. Or just sift it already. Or get a scale and recipes by weight, which is a lot easier. Don't try to convert from volume to weight until you have some expertise. It's a lot harder than the arithmetic to get right.

So this is a long way of also saying, follow the recipe. :) Good luck with the next batch.

Did the original recipe call for the chips and craisins? I'd think those would certainly make the dough a bit trickier to handle.

"Rather, whatever remained inside the shells after adding the eggs to mix-bowl, was trashed along with the shells."

@jally, were your eggs room temp when you cracked them open? That will help most of the white release from the shell since it's less viscous. There's always some white that remains with the shells, but it should be a non-issue. I assumed that's what you meant. As plllog posted, you certainly don't need to scrape the shells.

On a side note... if a recipe calls for separating eggs, do that when they're cold, then bring to room temp.

Thank you all, and pillog, thanks so very much for confirming my suspicion about the egg-whites assisting toward pliability (I think that's what you meant), and to all of you who explained about the powdered sugar as a possible brittleness factor.

Now to answer some Qs,

• I don't recall how long I had the egg-box laying on the table outside the fridge, thus can't confirm the room-temp. factor. But for sure the margarine was room-temp.
• the orig. recipe was for pinwheel cookies. Believe it or not, I couldn't find a recipe for twists!
• the orig. pinwheel cookie recipe did not call for craisins or choco-bits. That was my idea, and indeed I think it contributed toward the choco-dough breaking-up, but I still think that a more pliable dough would have helped counteract that.
• I used all-purpose flour and extra-large eggs.
• There were reasons that i decided to omit quite a bit of the egg whites. For one thing, I thought they'd be moister that way. Secondly, I worried the full-dose of egg whites might render the dough TOO sticky to handle easily. That's because I saw some commenters on pinwheel cookie recipes stating that their dough came out too sticky. But that might have been due to the melted-chocolate in their recipes.
• chloebud, you speak of the extra cocoa I added, but note that I actually mentioned that I used LESS cocoa that the orig. recipe called for. THE ORIGINAL recipe called for 1/4 cup, whereas mine was 1/5 or 1/6.

P.S. I'd be curious to see pics & comments further down this thread, if any of you might decide to experiment with variations of this recipe. ;)

It's the moisture from the eggs, if much were tossed, that would have made it more pliable, not the magic powers of the eggwhites (I'm not being snide—eggwhites really do have magic powers, due to the protein and moisture). Since you used extra-large eggs, however, you probably had a little extra to spare. Too little moisture can definitely make the dough brittle.

Add water (moisture) to flour and you get a pliable dough. Add a lot of water and you get sticky, Add sugar and fat and it's even more pliable. Work the dough too much while you're mixing and the gluten will form, making it stiff.

So, if you're substituting egg sizes—though what you posted above doesn't specify—you can usually do so straight on, adding a drip of water or pinch of flour to adjust the texture. Usually, extra-large is a better substitute for large than medium, because of the magic powers. If you want to be precise, you can beat up the eggs and weigh them. There are charts, easy to look up online, that say the ranges each size weigh. Make sure to use one for your country, You should also be able to find a chart of volumes, though those are less precise. Egg size for sale is measured by weight, and often the weight of the dozen (though the charts give a range per egg), so the volumes aren't as specific.

A caution about comments. Many are written by people who haven't followed the recipe, and another many by people who don't know how to bake/cook. When several detail a specific flaw, however, like the stickiness of the dough, it's a good sign that it's a bad, or at least not perfected, recipe. Maybe the author intended a sticky dough but didn't think to say so or give tips for working it, or maybe her flour was particularly dried out or her eggs were small, so hers was less moist. Blog recipes tend to be better than a lot of published recipes. ATK and the old Gourmet Magazine famously test recipes thoroughly, and I'm pretty sure NYT test, though I don't know how much. A lot of recipes published under the names of celebrity chefs are made up by assistants they barely know and no one ever tries them, exceot maybe a food stylist for the pictures. Since blogs run on reputation, rather than marketing, they do tend to be better, but for all the author has actually made them, she/he might not make things that are easily reproduced from what's written.

You could try your recipe again, without trying so hard to outthink it. Just make up the dough as specified, and if it's too sticky, add a little flour until it feels right. Or try another recipe. :)

Why would more egg whites make a dough stiffer or drier? Eggs are part of the liquid component.

Commenting on untested recipes... I have a neighbor who published a cookbook. I was so excited to know a real cookbook author. One day we were talking about it and I asked her how she did her testing. Did she enlist neighbors, friends, family, etc or did she do it all herself? She looked at me, laughed, and said nothing was tested! Totally boggled my mind.

So, to be ultra-fair, there was the woman who entered a famius burger contest, and won, or won a place in the event, or something, with a recipe she made up but hadn't actually tried. I know she had to cook it at the event, and it came out as expected. And it was that good when made. But a burger is such a confined and constrained type of thing that oodles of experience is imaginably enough. I make improvisational cakes—cakes also being limited by the ranges of the ratios—and they're always good (except when I had an ungovernable oven), but I'd never set one as a recipe before trying it at least once.

"bbstx", maybe that is why a couple cookbooks I bought, none of the recipes I tried work?

To pillog: The variation I posted in my O.P. was culled from the following recipe:

https://www.thecookierookie.com/chocolate-vanilla-pinwheel-cookies/

So referring back to my O.P., would you have followed the latter recipe exactly?

To carolb:

Your Q:

why more egg whites would make dough stiffer/drier. .......What I actually stated - in so many different words - is that I thought the cookies would be moister [thus more luscious] by being sparing when removing the egg whites from shell.

To explain the reason why I stated that, please see Item #4 wikihow - https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Cookies-Chewy

Also, carolb, it may interest that this often works well for me. In other words, when I'm sparing with egg whites, rather than removing every last bit of whites, my baked goods come out more luscious and less dry, as long as I don't over-bake!

To bbstx: I too have had disillusionments from cookbook recipes.

Jally, it's a sugar cookie, but it does read wet, so I'm not surprised that some found it sticky. If I didn't like the recipe, I'd find a better one rather than messing so much with this one. It's late, and I might have missed something, but what the Wikihow says about the eggs is to substitute yolk (fat) for the white (protein and water), to use two yolks instead of a whole egg. If you're making a regular chocolate cookie recipe and want it fudgy and dense rather than risen, this could work, but why not start with the right kind of recipe? Sugar cookies were not meant to be chewy. They're fairly firm though somewhat pillowy. That's an appropriate texture for your twists. I'd think they'd be less appetizing if the were gooey.

So the difference, all other things being equal, especially time and temperature, between a chewy cookie, that's still a cookie, and a crisp one, is a spoon of water. That's it. The size of spoon depends on the size of the batter. Half a teaspoon is sufficient for an average recipe. Wild, huh? You don't need to stand on your head and cross your toes.

So where in that wikihow article does it say to be sparing in the use of egg whites? The only mention of egg whites is a suggestion to substitute a yolk for a white, as yolks are fattier. It doesn't suggest leaving out any white.

Never mind the wikihow, instead read what i stated directly below the wikihow link. That is my answer to both the above. (I happen to have read that tip about whites somewhere, but I don't recall where I read it. And even if I don't recall where i read it, it doesn't matter to me, because it has worked for me, when baking brownies, bars, cookies).

I like cookies to be moist/chewy - never mind what texture they're officially "supposed to be" (though my twists are somewhere in between).

I guess that wraps up this thread, as i certainly don't want to stand on my head.

But if you're using extra-large eggs, rather than the large that are usually called for, what you're doing by scanting the whites is restoring the proper balance of the recipe, right? less white in a brownie just means weaker structure of the bubbles. That is technically ”fallen” which works for gooey chewy brownies.

If you want a chewy texture, that's fine, but it would be easier adapting a recipe you like the texture of to the look you want, rather than trying to make a sugar cookie, which is on the road to a cake-like texture, and is meant to be firm and light, into a brownie-like cookie. Learn your basic ratios and you'll have a much easier time producing what you want.

"chloebud, you speak of the extra cocoa I added, but note that I actually mentioned that I used LESS cocoa that the orig. recipe called for. THE ORIGINAL recipe called for 1/4 cup, whereas mine was 1/5 or 1/6."

Duly noted...sorry!

Well, it looks like i'm standing on my head again, because finally i hit upon the magic key-words which I hadn't previously, namely, "black white twist cookies". That yielded the recipes i'd had in mind to begin with

(though its red/white vs. black/white):

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/candy_cane_cookies/

Ironically, the first commenter on there, mentions substituting confect.sugar.

Congratulations on finding another recipe, closer to what you wanted. Do note that the commenter also wants to remove the soda, and is speaking in future tense. S/he hasn't actually tried it with said changes and the other commenters didn't have the trouble. I would not follow that first comment. Check the recipe's troubleshooting tips, instead. Chilling the shaped cookies well before baking, as it says (that timid ”few minutes” should be longer than a literal ”few”), especially if the kitchen is warm, will set the butter and keep it from melting before the dough structure firms up sufficiently. That first commenter said s/he was “aware” of how chilled the dough should be, but not that s/he’d actually done it. And that's assuming it wasn't a troll post.

But ironic? Yes! There seems to be a fad of using confectioner's sugar in cookies. There are a bunch of shortbread recipes out there which claim it's requred. Considering that masses of shortbread were made long before specialty sugars were easily available to home cooks, this is puzzling to me. If you cream your butter and sugar properly, which is a chore by hand, but only requires a good bowl that fits in the crook of your elbow and a strong wooden spoon, you don't need pre-pulverized sugar. Certainly not with a mixer.

Please let us know the results if you try again!

I see, though as I'd stated above, I only used the confect.sugar, thinking it might make it "whiter" not because of it being pulverized. I'm not sure when/if I might try it again, but if any of you try the recipe(s), ditto ditto..