S’mores Cookies

Adapted from Eleanor Klivans’ Big Fat Cookies

These cookies are out of control. They are not very pretty to look at. But they are out of control in the taste department.

 We know marshmallows get soft and gooey in a regular fireside S’more.

And we know marshmallows get caramelly and sticky from making Rice Krispies.

These cookies are the best of both those Utopian worlds.

Gooey, melty, sticky, chewy, chocolately, graham-crackery goodness.

The original recipe calls for using graham cracker crumbs, but I went with buying the sheets then crumbling them up myself. I like the texture of having a few bigger pieces of graham crackers dotted throughout the cookie. Because there is so little flour used here, you really get full on graham cracker flavor.

If you under-bake them a little, you get maximum gooeyness, but they are going to tend to fall apart. I found them to be most delicious this way.

 If you’re more into having them look cohesive (these are not pretty suckers), then make sure to bake them longer so that they hold together. They will be a little crispier, and the marshmallows will have melted into that clear, sticky caramelly thing around the edges.

Either way, they are phenomenally delicious.

Ingredients

¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

½ cup sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

18 sheets (2 packets) graham crackers

¼ cup flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 ½ cups miniature marshmallows

Method

Preheat oven to 325.

Place the graham crackers in a food storage bag and bash with a rolling pin until you have mostly crumbs with a few larger pieces. Set aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Crack in the egg and pour in the vanilla extract. Beat until well incorporated.

Gradually pour in the graham cracker crumbs, flour and salt. Mix until combined.

Add the chocolate chips and marshmallows and mix well.

Using an ice cream scoop or ¼ cup measure, drop rounded balls of dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet, 4 inches apart. Flatten the tops of the cookies slightly so that they are about ¾ of an inch thick.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. The edges of the cookies will look clear and caramelly, while the centers may still have bits of white marshmallow peeking out.

Cool for 5 minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to a wire rack using a big spatula.

Makes 15 ooey gooey cookies.

Uncharacteristically Pink

Seriously folks, I have buttermilk fatigue.

But! I present to you Buttermilk Case Files No.2 (what was No.1?): Berry Glazed Buttermilk Cookies . Isn’t she pretty?

First though….I got totally distracted by a peanut butter chocolate filling that I made accidentally on purpose.

I thought I would sandwich these cookies with the filling. It didn’t work out. I know it looks like it might work out, but it won’t. Trust me. Don’t worry though, I have better plans for that filling.

But back to the beginning – first you make the dough. And then you take a picture of the scraped-out batter bowl because you can obviously never have enough pictures of scraped-out batter bowls. (I think I’m obsessed, but aren’t they beautiful in a forlorn sort of way?)

Then you gloat over the perfect even-sized rounds of dough you finally, finally, finally learned how to make. It’s taken….let’s just say it’s taken many bowls of dough and futzing around with tablespoon measures and spatulas.

Then, cookies! A tumble of them! Baking is magic!

Have to take that warm bite. You can also never have enough photos of half-bitten cookies.

Then – a pause. The chocolate filling didn’t work with these. So what next? The original recipe called for a buttermilk glaze. But since I just did a white icing on white cake a few days ago, I had to go for something different.

Then I had a brain-burp (slightly, but not much more elegant than a brain-fart), and thought Berry Glaze. Thawed frozen berry juice can be a real life saver. Don’t underestimate it.

I had much fun with my little piggy whisk because the glaze matched him so perfectly.

And he looks like maybe he wants to dive into that bowl of pink glaze (as would I)….

…..but is kind of petrified by it at the same time (I would be too).

Finally I let him off the hook and got busy glazing.

Totally imperfect glazing, but that’s alright.

The girly-girl in me was squee-ing  over the pretty pink. No food coloring in this, people. None.

Speaking of pretty in pink (and squeeing), this whole experience made me feel much girlier than I really am. These had me dreaming of matching pink tea sets and a feeling I should be wearing a tutu and ballerina slippers. And maybe inviting the whole cast of Glee over while I’m at it.

But luckily I got back to my senses by watching back-to-back episodes of Entourage instead and made a plan for the peanut butter chocolate filling I abandoned earlier.

This plan may or may not involve Pop Tarts. Stay tuned.

But for now….

Berry Glazed Buttermilk Cookies

Adapted from Gourmet

Because I originally wanted to pair these with chocolate, I left out the lemon zest that is in the original recipe. Internet research (my favorite kind) led me to Orangette’s post on these cookies, where she recommends halving the recipe and upping the lemon zest to a teaspoon. I would do the same. The lemon zest would compliment the berry glaze swimmingly. (Swimmingly is my new favorite word for pretending I’m British).

I happened to have thawed frozen berries in my fridge, but you can easily use a good berry juice, or thin out about a teaspoon of your favorite jam with a little water, vanilla extract or lemon juice. You basically need two teaspoons of berry juice/jam/liquid for a half cup of icing sugar.

Ingredients

Cookies

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon lemon zest

6 tablespoons butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg, room temperature

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup buttermilk

Berry Glaze

2 teaspoons liquid from thawed frozen mixed berries

1/2 cup icing sugar

Method

Line a large baking sheet with parchment. Preheat the oven to 350.

Whisk the flour, baking soda, lemon zest and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.

Using the paddle attachment on a stand mixer (or a handheld electric mixer), beat the butter and sugar on medium-low speed until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well-incorporated.

With the mixer on low, add 1/3 of the flour and then1/2 of the buttermilk, beating just until the dough comes together each time. Repeat until all the flour is used up. You should have a smooth dough, but do not overmix.

Drop tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto the baking sheet about 1.5 inches apart. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack. Cool completely before glazing.

To make the glaze, whisk the icing sugar together with the berry liquid until you have a smooth paste. Using a small spoon or spatula, glaze the cookies with about 1/2 a teaspoon of glaze per cookie.

Makes 24 squee-worthy cookies.

Exotic

Show me a durian, a mangosteen, biryani or fish curry and I’ll probably shrug and say “so what?”

But show me a chocolate chip cookie – any chocolate chip cookie – and you’ll have me at hello.

Exotic is like anything else a matter of perspective. Since I come from a background where the every day  was steeped in nam pla and cardamom but sorely deprived of butter, sugar, and (HELLO!) chocolate chips, you’ll begin to appreciate why for me, a chocolate chip cookie can never be an ordinary thing.

In my head, a chocolate chip cookie is baking and represents everything baking should be – warm, cozy, comforting, buttery-sweet…..and exotic. Plus, there’s something about the scent of these in the oven that virtually announces “America Red White And Blue Apple Pie On A Window Sill Land Of Freedom And Gingham And Blue Jeans”. Many of us love to travel to exotic places via the food we cook. If I didn’t already live here then the number one recipe in my book for kitchen-traveling to the United States would be this cookie.

In the 4^th grade, during my years in Bangkok, a friend gave me a gift wrapped bag of Striped Chips Ahoy cookies (80s kids do you remember these?) for my birthday. This may sound cheap-o to you, but let me tell you, it’s the only gift I remember from that year and I received many. I treasured that package, guarded it with my life, didn’t share with anyone and went through it slowly for a whole month, allowing myself one cookie a day so to make the experience last. That gives you an idea what the American supermarket staple meant to a curry-fatigued kid on the other side of the world.

What a long and tragic way we’ve come.

A) They no longer make Striped Chips Ahoy. The entire backside of each cookie was dipped in chocolate! Plus, were the cookies bigger back then or was I just smaller? And why do these companies always stop making the most delicious product in their line-up?

B) I wouldn’t be caught dead buying a bag of Chips Ahoy now. I’m not even sure they should be allowed to call them chocolate chip cookies (more like spongy-sawdust studded with questionable brown pebbles).  At any rate, homemade and/or artisan is what the cool kids do these days.

When I developed an interest in baking I tried out several different recipes, beginning where everyone begins, at Nestle Toll House. I was planning to embark on the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie Quest by baking my way through other recipes that have evolved from the original and taking detailed notes (baker-geek satisfaction). But then, the America’s Test Kitchen / Cook’s Illustrated team (Baker Geek Headquarters) developed a recipe that you just know has got to be foolproof.

I think they might have invented the word foolproof.

I don’t know what exactly their hyper-thorough recipe testing process is but it’s clear that those mad scientists know what the heck they’re doing. I can only dream of having that kind of fine-tooth-combed attention to detail.

So alas, my cookie expedition was over before it even began.

This recipe is genius. What I love is that there are no strange ingredients like bread flour, shortening or gourmet chocolate “discs”. It uses all the basics that we’re familiar with, but the unique permutation-combination of the methodology elevates each step to a whole new level. That’s the kind of stuff I adore with recipe tweaking – nothing fancy, just smart.

An added bonus is that you don’t have to wait for butter to soften which is the step that always annoys me the most. Usually the mood strikes me to bake cookies and then it’s like crap, I have to wait for the butter to soften. Not with this gem.

This is recipe testing at its best. And it makes a super-delicious cookie that tastes the way you want “homemade” to taste, unpretentious but So Good.

Cook’s Illustrated’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie (click for link to original recipe)

Ingredients

1 ¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

14 tablespoons unsalted butter

½ cup granulated sugar

¾ cups packed dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1 ¼ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

¾ cups chopped nuts (optional)

Method

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment.

Whisk flour and baking soda together in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Now here’s the Baker Geek part – heat 10 tablespoons butter (cut into chunks, melts faster) in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium high heat. You want the butter to get brown and nutty. This is the crucial step that brings the butterscotch-toffee depth to the cookie dough.

Remove the pan from the heat and pour the browned butter into a heat-proof bowl. Chuck the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter into the bowl and whisk until all the butter has melted. (The addition of remaining butter into the nutty butter cools down the whole brown butter situation).

Dump in both the sugars, salt and vanilla. Whisk the whole lot together until everything is fully incorporated. Add in the egg and the egg yolk (less moisture from loss of one egg white = more chewiness). Whisk all.

And now, the really interesting bit – you let it sit. Let the mixture sit for 3 minutes (it’s okay if it’s like 3 minutes and 10 seconds but don’t tell the Cook’s team). Then whisk everything again for 30 seconds. Repeat 2 more times. It sounds insane but the evidence is in the pictures below. You’ll go from a thinner darker looking mixture….

……to a thick, glossy, melted toffee-like mixture. GE-NI-US.

Stir in the flour mixture with a wooden spoon or sturdy spatula until combined and toss in the chocolate chips. Mix. That’s my favorite part because now it finally looks like chocolate chip cookie dough.

Erm, at this point you’re supposed to divide the dough into 16 portions using a #24 cookie dough scoop, or about 3 tablespoons per cookie. Clearly I need to buy the cookie scoop that’s been on my Amazon wishlist forever or a re-education on what constitutes a tablespoon because my cookies ended up GiNORmous. Not a tragedy, but still.

Undaunted, plow forward and place each scoop of dough (whatever the size) 2 inches apart. Bake cookies one tray at a time for 10 to 14 minutes (or a little longer if you have no-sense-of-proportion-ginormous-cookies), until golden brown and well, cookie-like. Transfer baking sheets to a wire rack.

Cool cookies before serving. (Yeah, good luck with that.)