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.
I chose the Mallow Cookies, because they seemed like more of a challenge--and my husband loves marshmallow. Some of the photos looked gorgeous--thin crisp cookies on the bottom, a fluffy cloud of marshmallow, all topped with a decadent chocolate shell. Seemed to be interesting and delicious! And as a bonus, both were recipes by one of my favorite pastry chefs, Gale Gand--the only one besides Jacques Torres and Warren Brown (briefly) to ever grace the Food Network. Being a professional, and studying in Europe, she always gives her recipes in American and Metric measurements. Being a control freak in the kitchen (okay, okay, maybe not just the kitchen), nothing makes me happier than seeing a recipe where precise weighted measurements are given.
I limited myself to one recipe, though we could have done both, because I knew just getting that accomplished and posted about would be another challenge in itself. Choosing the mallows was a selfless act--I love Milano cookies, always have, and only like marshmallows in s'mores. Just not a big marshmallow girl, I guess. I knew I wouldn't be eating any of them. Actually, this may have been a wiser choice. I am this close to getting back into my regular pre-pregnancy jeans, so I didn't really need a big ol' batch of cookies to stare at.
Anyway! This month was full of irritations. The shortbread dough was pretty easy to work with, if you treated it ike a pie dough and made sure that you had it cold enough and floured enough. They baked up nicely, if a little softer than I expected, so I turned to the marshmallow portion.
The recipe given was a marshmallow that I was not familiar with. There are two types of marshmallows, I learned--a confection made with just gelatin, corn syrup, sugar and water, which I have successfully made before, and also a meringue type of marshmallow cream. The recipe called for the latter, and started with an egg white base. It was an Italian meringue method, where hot sugar syrup is poured into the egg whites. This might bring the temperature to 160, the jury's out on that one.
I am uncomfortable with making meringues in this way. I am the type of person who never eats eggs over easy, and never eats raw cookie dough--I am really paranoid about food safety and salmonella. I prefer the Swiss Meringue method of heating egg whites and sugar to 160 before whipping. Thinking back, I would have adapted the recipe to this method, to ensure a safe meringue. What I did instead was use a gelatin-based marshmallow recipe that I have used before--this one by Alton Brown.
In the past I just spread these marshmallows out in a pan to set, and cut them later. This recipe called for them to be piped--which turned out to be completely impossible. These marshmallows were so unebelievably sticky and difficult--I hadn't remembered just how elastic they were. Just getting them into the piping bag made a huge, huge mess. Piping was not happening. They wouldn't release, and came off in long sugary strings that quickly got everywhere. If you even touched one of the mounds of fluff it would stick to you--my hand, the other cookies, the pastry bag, everything. It was Lucy in the marshmallow factory.
So that was a big roadblock. I was pretty disappointed, because I had a limited time to do this to begin with. I had really hoped for some pretty, beautifully shaped cookies. I didn't have time or energy to make another batch of marshmallows (even though I had dozens of cookies left over to use--the recipe makes a ton of shortbread.) So I decided just to dip the ones I had in chocolate and call it a day.
Here again...poor judgment and lack of proper planning got the best of me. I hadn't made it to Trader Joe's to get chocolate, and ended up using what I had, even though I knew it wouldn't work well--chocolate chips. They just are not suited for this type of thing. They contain stabilizers that help them keep their shape when baked, and when melted were a thick, gloppy mess. I hadn't wanted to add the oil, because I knew if I did, the cookies would never harden fully. But I ended up adding a little, just to make it possible to coat the cookies. Didn't help much, and they didn't quite harden, as predicted.
I didn't take the time to properly temper them (if one can actually temper chocolate chips) and I got a little bloom on them the next day. It's a shame, because I have been wanting to practice my chocolate techniques. In Bakewise, Shirley says an easy shortcut to classic tempering, which involves heating and cooling chocolate in a fussy and precise way, is to make sure you never heat it over 91-92 degrees--the crystals that make the "bloom" happen will never form, and you'll get a nice shiny coating. I've been looking for a project that will let me test this theory. It's a shame, but right now I just don't have the time to get really creative with my challenges, or to make them three times. I want to, believe me, I had lots of ideas for these cookies. Peanut butter, caramel, nuts, different chocolate coatings...I wanted to experiment. I really, really need to get myself a baby sling so I can have my hands free!
So in conclusion..I would bake my shortbread a bit more to get a nicer crunch. I would try the meringue marshmallow recipe given, as it seemed to pipe beautifully for others. And I would definitely, never again use chocolate chips to coat anything--always bar chocolate.
To see what the other clever Daring Bakers did with their cookies, check out the Daring Bakers Kitchen.
I chose the Mallow Cookies, because they seemed like more of a challenge--and my husband loves marshmallow. Some of the photos looked gorgeous--thin crisp cookies on the bottom, a fluffy cloud of marshmallow, all topped with a decadent chocolate shell. Seemed to be interesting and delicious! And as a bonus, both were recipes by one of my favorite pastry chefs, Gale Gand--the only one besides Jacques Torres and Warren Brown (briefly) to ever grace the Food Network. Being a professional, and studying in Europe, she always gives her recipes in American and Metric measurements. Being a control freak in the kitchen (okay, okay, maybe not just the kitchen), nothing makes me happier than seeing a recipe where precise weighted measurements are given.
I limited myself to one recipe, though we could have done both, because I knew just getting that accomplished and posted about would be another challenge in itself. Choosing the mallows was a selfless act--I love Milano cookies, always have, and only like marshmallows in s'mores. Just not a big marshmallow girl, I guess. I knew I wouldn't be eating any of them. Actually, this may have been a wiser choice. I am this close to getting back into my regular pre-pregnancy jeans, so I didn't really need a big ol' batch of cookies to stare at.
Anyway! This month was full of irritations. The shortbread dough was pretty easy to work with, if you treated it ike a pie dough and made sure that you had it cold enough and floured enough. They baked up nicely, if a little softer than I expected, so I turned to the marshmallow portion.
The recipe given was a marshmallow that I was not familiar with. There are two types of marshmallows, I learned--a confection made with just gelatin, corn syrup, sugar and water, which I have successfully made before, and also a meringue type of marshmallow cream. The recipe called for the latter, and started with an egg white base. It was an Italian meringue method, where hot sugar syrup is poured into the egg whites. This might bring the temperature to 160, the jury's out on that one.
I am uncomfortable with making meringues in this way. I am the type of person who never eats eggs over easy, and never eats raw cookie dough--I am really paranoid about food safety and salmonella. I prefer the Swiss Meringue method of heating egg whites and sugar to 160 before whipping. Thinking back, I would have adapted the recipe to this method, to ensure a safe meringue. What I did instead was use a gelatin-based marshmallow recipe that I have used before--this one by Alton Brown.
In the past I just spread these marshmallows out in a pan to set, and cut them later. This recipe called for them to be piped--which turned out to be completely impossible. These marshmallows were so unebelievably sticky and difficult--I hadn't remembered just how elastic they were. Just getting them into the piping bag made a huge, huge mess. Piping was not happening. They wouldn't release, and came off in long sugary strings that quickly got everywhere. If you even touched one of the mounds of fluff it would stick to you--my hand, the other cookies, the pastry bag, everything. It was Lucy in the marshmallow factory.
So that was a big roadblock. I was pretty disappointed, because I had a limited time to do this to begin with. I had really hoped for some pretty, beautifully shaped cookies. I didn't have time or energy to make another batch of marshmallows (even though I had dozens of cookies left over to use--the recipe makes a ton of shortbread.) So I decided just to dip the ones I had in chocolate and call it a day.
Here again...poor judgment and lack of proper planning got the best of me. I hadn't made it to Trader Joe's to get chocolate, and ended up using what I had, even though I knew it wouldn't work well--chocolate chips. They just are not suited for this type of thing. They contain stabilizers that help them keep their shape when baked, and when melted were a thick, gloppy mess. I hadn't wanted to add the oil, because I knew if I did, the cookies would never harden fully. But I ended up adding a little, just to make it possible to coat the cookies. Didn't help much, and they didn't quite harden, as predicted.
I didn't take the time to properly temper them (if one can actually temper chocolate chips) and I got a little bloom on them the next day. It's a shame, because I have been wanting to practice my chocolate techniques. In Bakewise, Shirley says an easy shortcut to classic tempering, which involves heating and cooling chocolate in a fussy and precise way, is to make sure you never heat it over 91-92 degrees--the crystals that make the "bloom" happen will never form, and you'll get a nice shiny coating. I've been looking for a project that will let me test this theory. It's a shame, but right now I just don't have the time to get really creative with my challenges, or to make them three times. I want to, believe me, I had lots of ideas for these cookies. Peanut butter, caramel, nuts, different chocolate coatings...I wanted to experiment. I really, really need to get myself a baby sling so I can have my hands free!
So in conclusion..I would bake my shortbread a bit more to get a nicer crunch. I would try the meringue marshmallow recipe given, as it seemed to pipe beautifully for others. And I would definitely, never again use chocolate chips to coat anything--always bar chocolate.
To see what the other clever Daring Bakers did with their cookies, check out the Daring Bakers Kitchen.
Posts
2 comments:
Even with all the difficulties your cookies look very good! I had a few problems and ended up making a second batch. Time got short and I had to use candy melts, they worked but would have prefered better chocolate.
I know--that stuff works so well, but it just doesn't taste like the good stuff.
Post a Comment