Cookies = Love

Dear Pickle:

Your mom said 'turd'? About cookies? Heheheheh! That is the best thing that happened this week.

I LOVE your disappearing cookie photos. The fact that you can 'whip' things up at the cottage. That your hubbo gets bribery cookies (very smart) to greet his Yukon crew. That you forgive me all my transgressions - even rhubarb and chocolate. So! On to the challenge!

You know that I love frosting. I love icing. I love glaze. I love most things that are called ‘topping’ (yes, even including ‘that’. Especially with Jell-o.) I have been known to discard the bottom parts of cupcakes if no one is looking and just use the ‘muffin top’ part of the cupcake as a buttercream delivery system.

For this reason, it is rather strange that I have never made a sandwich cookie, the kind that is filled with sweet, sweet frosting/icing/what-you-will. Maybe it’s because I like to make things with big yields (Little Miss Greedy) and you have to use two cookies to make each sandwich cookie, thereby halving the number of cookies you end up with. How is that fair? But your challenge seemed the perfect opportunity to stretch my cookie-making skills over into the filled arena. (And an excuse to make frosting.)

I made these chocolate sandwich cookies with a creamy filling. Perhaps you’ve heard of their supermarket counterparts… Yes, I made Faux-Reos. That isn’t my overly cutesy name, that’s the moniker bestowed by the King Arthur Flour cookie book. Cutesy names aside, I am a little bit obsessed with this book. It is filled with old school cookie recipes, but I am obsessed mainly for one practical reason.

Have I sermonized to you yet about the wonders of using a kitchen scale? It makes baking about a thousand times easier if you don’t have to fiddle with cups. Not to mention more accurate. Throw in a Kitchenaid and you can have a batch of cookies in the oven in mere moments. Alas, most North American recipe books use the old cups system and you have to find not only European/British cookbooks, but also European/British editions of those cookbooks to cook using weight. Except for the wonderful bakers behind the King Arthur test kitchen in Vermont! Their blog, here, is for my money the best how-to baking blog on the net and a MUST READ. (If you need to be convinced of the merits of baking by weight, just make one batch of peanut butter cookies with a scale – i.e. without scraping the sticky stuff in and out of measuring cups – and you will be a convert. I did that but they didn't survive long enough to be photographed!)

These are made from a very soft cocoa dough, which you must chill for at least a few hours before rolling out. Even after an overnight chill, I still had to roll them out on a Silpat with loads of flour. (And NOW I read on their blog a different recipe that doesn't seem to require rolling out and looks way cuter than mine... Damnit!) The filling is – well, there are some things you wish you could un-know. One of these things for me is that the centers of Oreos are, apparently, largely shortening. Blurgh. The shortening gets beaten with a lot of icing sugar and a little dissolved gelatin, with vanilla for flavour.

The results were more delicate than a supermarket Oreo, a reminder that sometimes less flavour is more. Subtle cocoa cookies sandwiching a filling that whispers of vanilla. Old fashioned and gentle and delicate, they were totally picnic worthy. The wafers had a crispy quality you would never find in a preserved, shelf-stable substitute and it played off the filling in a way real Oreos could only dream of. I’m glad my little guys tasted them before they ever tasted the commercial variety – although we’re just not going to think about how the health effects of all the shortening was consumed in my house this week.

Thanks for fitting such a tasty challenge between the crispy cocoa wafers of my life. What a big yield!

X

Gumdrop
p.s. I am like a cookbook pusher.

p.p.s. I too made a crazy chocolate chip cookie variation this week for a visit to my parents/brother's cottage - a summery and off-beat combo of Dried Blueberries, White Chocolate Chips and Slivered Almonds. Photo to follow.

p.p.p.s. New challenge tomorrow!!!

p.p.p.p.s. I will be your kid and eat your cookies after school. I will also accept cake and milk, like Harriet The Spy.