The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.
For this month’s Daring Bakers, I decided that I wanted to focus on the “mallow” cookies rather than the milanos because a) I hate milanos and b) I wanted to take another stab at making marshmallows. In Canada, mallows (the cookie) are often referred to as puffs, and are generally sold with a layer of jam in between the cookie and the marshmallow. Being as big a fan of jam as I am, I had initially planned to go that route, but the sheer mechanics of this recipe determined for me that I was being overzealous.
With that in mind, let’s get to the details, shall we?
I decided to make things easy on myself and prepped the cookies over the course of a few days. On day one I mixed up the cookie dough, which was sandy and similar in content to a graham cracker dough. I wanted it to be different, so I added in a touch of Dutch cocoa and some chocolate extract to up the cacao factor a bit.
The recipe states that cutting out the dough into rounds approximately 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter should yield approximately 2 dozen cookies. I don’t know who’s doing the counting over at Gale Gand Inc., but this dough most certainly did not make 24 dainty cookies.
Oh no, my friends. By the time it was all said and done, I had 90 cookies. That’s right. 90.
After cutting, baking and cooling all of them, I decided to call it a day and picked up the marshmallow making the following morning.
It’s been about a year and a half since I’ve produced my own marshmallows. The last time, they were part of a Christmas present for my gluten allergic mother-in-law, so that she could enjoy my famous ‘smore cookies. At the time it was a kitchen disaster, though the cookies still turned out good. Being overenthusiastic (as usual) after preparing the hot liquid sugar, I poured it into my stand mixer, turned it on high, and immediately felt the pain of searing hot marshmallow fluff affixing itself to my skin, the ceiling, cabinets, everywhere. I suffered some pretty intense burns as a result of this, not to mention that 6 months later I was still finding places to remove marshmallow from.
From the get-go of this mallow challenge, I knew (and hoped) that it couldn’t get any worse than that, so I soldiered on and warmed up the sugary, corp syrup mixture. And luckily for me, everything went well from here on out. The texture of the marshmallow wasn’t necessarily what I would’ve liked it to be (it seemed more gelatinous and spongy than fluffy) but I assumed that it served a purpose because the marshmallow had to be piped onto a cookie.
Since I had so many cookies, I opted to split the marshmallow into 6 batches and flavoured each one a little differently. I also tinted the marshmallows so that I would be able to tell them apart. For your edification;
- green = peppermint
- pink = rosewater
- orange = orange blossom
- white = plain (vanilla)
- blue = chocolate
- purple = coffee
Once the flavours were added and the colours applied, I piped out the mallow onto my dozens of cookies. Staring down the sea of mallow-topped delights, my head spun at the thought of trying to get rid of so many cookies. Ironically, one of our cats decided to assist me with that, jumping onto the counter, grabbing a cookie by the marshmallow and trying to make a break for it. Unfortunately for the cat, marshmallow appears to degrade in cat saliva, so it fell off with a disgusting plop, leaving only cookie in the cat’s mouth.
Ok, so now we’re down to 89.
The marshmallow topping had to set for a few hours to firm up, so I left them in a safe place (to prevent more absconding) and went about my business for the afternoon.
Later that day, I began prepping the kitchen for the chocolate coating portion of the challenge. Being that I used to make truffles as a part-time business, working with chocolate is not new to me, but dipping things in it is one of the aspects I dislike the most. Especially things with delicate temperaments that can melt at the slightest provocation. For this task, I extracted another of the gigantic blocks of Callebaut chocolate (that my darling mother-in-law had left in my Christmas stocking) from the freezer, and began coarsely chopping it into meltable chunks. Another irritating thing about this recipe is that I essentially had to double the amount of chocolate suggested to make enough coating for all of the cookies. On top of that, the recipe claims that the chocolate will set and firm up a couple hours after dipping, but mine just sat there like an almost melted film. I think if the recipe hadn’t relied on thinning the chocolate with oil this would have worked more as intended. In the end, frustrated, I threw the trays of chocolate dipped cookies into the freezer to firm, then peeled them off the Silpat and portioned them into individually labelled bags. With 15 of each kind of cookie, I knew I’d have to send them to work with both the Everyman and I several times before they would all be gone.
And how did they turn out?
Well, that night the Everyman and I sampled one of each, and they were all relatively good. I didn’t care for the rosewater much, as it was too overtly floral. The coffee wasn’t quite strong enough, and I could barely detect the chocolate extract in the blue ones, but the mint, orange blossom (surprisingly) and vanilla mallows rocked my world. Removing them from the freezer and allowing them to thaw for a scant few minutes before biting into one is a little slice of heaven.
Are they good enough that I would bother making them again, though? Hells no. For the amount of work involved (and considering I don’t even like mallows all that much) I’d much rather make a cookie I already enjoy. Like my ‘smore cookies. Hmm… I haven’t made those in a while…
Until next time…
Tags: Baking, Daring Kitchen, July 2009 Challenge, mallows, New Projects
