What can you tell about the state of margarine in this cookie?

Question

I want the find out about the structure of the margarine used, shown in the photo below.

I baked this cookie from a frozen dough I bought. The frozen dough was very hard. I am wondering about these spots that look like freckles. I want to find out about the structure of the margarine used. The fat did not set uniformly. Some spots ARE SHINY, and some spots are not. Is this margarine? Was it in hard cold state at creaming?

The frozen dough acts like it has oil in it. Or the fat was melted, because I can pick the chocolate chips in it. But I don't think it has oil in it, because the frozen dough is hard. And won't get soft.

They don't stick to the dough. When I use room temperature margarine, the chips just blend in with the dough...

When I use room-temperature margarine it just won't keep a uniform structure.

Would cold margarine act different?

What can you tell about the margarine used in this cookie? Cold? Melted?

Answer 1

If I am looking at the same things you are when you describe the "freckles", they look more like debris from shattered chocolate chips than any artifact of the dough ingredients. How did you shape the cookies from the frozen dough you purchased? Was it in the shape of a log that you sliced? If so, that cutting would create small chocolate chip particles on top of the cookie that would look like those freckles when they melted during cooking.

As far as the shininess on the top of the cookie, that can often be caused by an abundance of sugar in the dough. Especially since they look to be slightly underdone.

I am curious why you are focusing on the margarine in this dough and comparing it to what happens when you make cookie dough at home. If this is commercially produced frozen cookie dough, there are probably many industrial ingredients and other additives in it that you don't use at home, and these can cause effects very different from what you are used to in homemade chocolate chip cookies.