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.
This was indeed a challenge, not that it was difficult, just the components had a few glitches, for me anyway. The first glitch was the dough, it was VERY soft, even when cold, and was difficult to roll out. Instructions indicated a lightly floured board, my dough stuck like glue; so I added a bit of flour to the dough and rolled it out on floured parchment paper with saran wrap on top; I also rolled it out a bit thicker; that seemed to work. The recipe stated it made about 24 cookies, right, I rolled half the dough out and already had 42 cookies; that's where I stopped cutting the dough and froze the other half. Maybe they meant the recipe would feed 24 people, LOL.
I have made marshmallows before, using Eileen Talanian's book Marshmallows, Homemade Gourmet Treats; this is a wonderful book and the instructions are very clear with many options for flavoring your mallows, I highly recommend this book. The recipe for marshmallows in our challenge was a bit different so I used Eileen's recipe for vanilla marshmallows and had no problems. The second glitch was with the chocolate glaze, it just would not set up, no matter how long you waited; I even put it in the refrigerator, as soon as you took it out and TRIED to pick one up you got chocolate all over your fingers. Although the cookies tasted good they were just too messy to eat, so into the trash they went!!! All 42 of them!
Not to be put off by either the baking gremlins or perhaps a recipe with a few minor errors, I tried again. This time I used part of Eileen's recipe for mallow cookies, she uses a graham cracker cookie as the base, the recipe is included in the book; BUT she has a shortcut, just soften graham crackers with a damp towel, cut with your round cookie cutter and then pop them in the oven for 5 minuets to crisp them back up; worked like a charm! I then decided to use Merckens Chocolate Melting Wafers for the glaze, that's what they are made for and there were no problems AT ALL with it hardening.
All in all a fun recipe to make, even though I had to throw away the entire first batch. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!!!
5 comments:
Yours look great! I had the same problem you did. I made half a batch and still ended up with 30+ cookies!
Glad you tried again. They look great!
YUM!!! Your cookies look awesome. They remind me of a treat I used to eat as a kid (don't know the English name for them but basically it's a crisp waffle, fluffy marshmallow filling and a thin layer of chocolate - you can buy them covered in white choc, milk choc or dark choc).
Wow, your marshmallows look perfect! I had the same problem with the chocolate glaze, but they didn't start to melt until a few minutes out of the fridge, so they were eaten:) I didn't use the cookie recipe that was suggested, I used a graham cracker recipe from Nancy Silverton's "Pastries from the La Brea Bakery", and it was so delicious. Glad you gave these a second shot - they turned out beautifully!
Oh!! Sorry this didn't work out. I know you hated having to throw them away. But I liked the mellow with the cookies before.
I ended up just making the milan cookies. Next time maybe the mellow cookies.
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