Daring Bakers! July Challenge!

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.

Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies

So once again the 27th day of the month has snuck up, leaving me highly unprepared for the Daring Bakers challenge. As in, this challenge was completed on the 27th of July, just making it in for the posting day. Unfortunately, my last minute baking also meant that I had to cut a couple of corners. Oops. Also, my mind was a bit preoccupied with other things (like buying a house), so my shortcuts didn't necessarily work out as well as they might have.

The choice was between Milan Cookies and Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies. The option was to do one or both, and because of my time crunch, I chose to just do one. In hindsight, I definitely chose the wrong one! I tried the Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies, but made them inverse. I would still like to try the Milan cookies, and hopefully that will happen in the next short while.

The recipe calls for making a batch of thin cookies (usually a vanilla/cinnamon flavour, but I chose to go with a chocolate flavour), of which mine turned out too thick. You top those with a swirl of homemade marshmallow (or they list the shortcut option of using store bought... I used store bought and added cocoa to make them chocolatey marshmallows, but they got way too runny and didn't sit nicely in peaks on the cookies) and then dip them in chocolate (normally milk chocolate, but I chose white chocolate, to complete the inverse of the recipe).

Well, the combo of way too thick cookies, not thick enough marshmallow and chocolate that never set certainly did not make for an impressive cookie. Sigh. I also personally didn't love the cookie part on it's own. It was kind of dry and blah. But that might have been my fault... Anyways, the photo really shows how the cookie:marshmallow:chocolate ratio was all off. You can barely see the marshmallow layer, because so much of it slid off the cookie.


Anyways, all in all it was an interesting experiment. I wish I had taken the time to try making the homemade marshmallow. And I'm looking forward to trying the Milan Cookies that were also part of the challenge. I'll try to remember to post about them when they happen.

Happy Cookies!
- Carolyn