Baking question.

[Ptah]

2. Here''s something to consider:

Why do perishable ingredients such as butter, milk, or eggs no longer have to be refrigerated after they've been baked into a cake or cookies?

The proteins and fats have been cooked and thoroughly denatured, and most of the water content has been driven off, these two steps do the most to prevent the cookie from reacting with oxygen and going 'off.' Consider when eggs are pan fried and the liquid part of the egg changes color and solidifies -- that's thermal denaturing; what we called being 'cooked.' This turns the protein strands from a wildly wavy, unconnected net into a tight, coherent structure that can be picked up with a spatula and slid onto a piece of toast.