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.

Now, given we are a household of two and we don’t have family living nearby, I didn’t want to make two sets of cookies. Especially since the two recipes claimed that they would make about 5 dozen cookies all told.  I figured that 5 dozen was a little much for us to finish off, even if I did have Rich take some of the cookies in to work with him.

Hah! Little did I know that the recipe I did choose, the Marshmallow one, would make so many cookies. Way, WAY more than the recipe said.

Of course, as usual I couldn’t just make the recipe exactly as written. Marshmallow is typically made with gelatin, which I prefer to avoid as it is derived from animal skin and bones. Yuck. This vegetarian isn’t really interested in eating that, so I had to find a different solution.

On the Alternative Bakers forum, a fellow baker named ‘tastyTrifles‘ pointed us all at a recipe from a really cool book called Texture: a hydrocolloid recipe collection. That recipe replaced the gelatin with xanthan gum. While it still contained egg whites and therefore wasn’t vegan, it was certainly an option the vegetarians in our group could use.  So I picked up some xanthan from a local store and set about making my cookies.

The bottom of the cookies was pretty easy to make, just a simple dough with a bit of cinnamon flavour. I followed the instructions as written, using a shotglass to cut 1.5 inch rounds of dough.  The recipe was supposed to yield about 2 dozen cookies, but after I’d cut 2 dozen rounds, I was left with more than half the dough. Hmm. Well, I kept cutting rounds until I got to 3.5 dozen, then I got annoyed and started cutting larger shapes (like, umm, mooses and crabs), thinking we could have those to snack on while I finished the rest of the cookie components. Baking up the cookies was simple and they came out of the oven nice and golden brown.

Making the marshmallow was actually not too bad, but as I don’t have a candy thermometer, I had to really watch things to make sure I didn’t take the sugar mixture well into the ‘hardball‘ stage. I also learned something very important, something I should have remembered from making caramel back in November – always use a pot with nice high sides when making candy.  My caramel started to boil over at one point, so I had to remove it from the heat, dump it into a much larger pan (while wearing silicone oven mits to avoid burns!), and take 15 minutes to clean up my stove. Ooops. But in the end I did manage to get my sugar mixture to the proper stage and get it all mixed in with the egg whites.  Then I added the xanthan and, well, hoped. It was a tense few minutes, but soon I had a nice mixture that resembled marshmallow fluff!  Success!

Being without a decent pastry bag, I just scooped my marshmallow mixture onto the cookies with a spoon. Then I left them in the fridge to harden overnight, and covered them in semisweet chocolate the next day. One issue I did have with this marshmallow is that it doesn’t stay very solid at room temperature; you really need to keep these cookies in the fridge if they’re going to hold their shape. Which actually makes them tastier, especially on a hot summer day. The other issue I had with the final product is that the original recipe makes way too many cookie bottoms but not nearly enough chocolate glaze. So if you want to make these yourself, make double the amount of glaze.

As always this was a fun challenge! If you’d like to see what the other Daring Bakers did with this recipe, just head on over to the blog roll.

Ever since Sugar High Friday ‘All that Glitters‘ was announced, I knew I wanted to participate, and I knew exactly what I wanted to make.  These Peanut Blossom cookies are so simple but so tasty, and are a popular treat during the holidays.  I mean really, what’s not to love?  Peanuts, hershey’s kisses and a sprinkle of sparkly sugar on top.  Yum!

For the dough I used Anna Olson’s ‘Ultimate Peanut Butter Cookie‘ recipe, which I’ll copy below.  My modifications in order to make Peanut Blossoms are noted.

The Ultimate Peanut Butter Cookie
Yield: 24
* 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
* 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350° F.

Cream together butter and sugars until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla and stir in peanut butter.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add to peanut butter mixture and blend in.

To make these cookies sparkle, roll dough into 1 inch balls and then roll each ball in some sugar. I recommend using fruit sugar, as it coats very nicely, but use whatever kind you like! Then, place dough balls on cookie sheet and flatten slightly with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern.

Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, until cookies just start to colour around the edges. Remove from pan immediately onto a cooling rack. While cookies are still hot, gentle press a hershey’s kiss into each one.

Thanks to Susan for hosting this month, and of course to Jennifer who started the whole Sugar High.

On January 28th, our apartment in Ottawa was loaded into a truck, and on January 30th, it was unloaded here in Toronto. Ever since, we’ve been trying to organize our belongings and generally figure out what to do with all our stuff. This, of course, has meant we haven’t had a lot of time to enjoy Toronto or cook things in our new (to us) kitchen!

Last night we decided to make chocolate chip cookies as our inaugural baked treat. Instead of going to one of our standby recipes, we decided to try a different one, courtesy of David Lebovitz. His version packs a whole lot of chocolate chips into a single cookie, which is exactly what we wanted. We did half with just chips, and half with walnuts. Yum.

Recipe is available here.

This also marks the very first post on Mmm, Tasty! instead of Epicurean Ottawa. Welcome to our new blog! We’re still working on the overall design, but it’s functional, at least.

More Toronto posts coming soon.

You might be wondering why I didn’t jump right in and make these as soon as the recipe was announced. Well, earlier this month I had some dental work, and I haven’t been able to chew much with my back teeth for several weeks — an unfortunate but expected side effect. However, my mouth has been doing better over the last few days, and there was no way I was going to skip baking one of my favourite treats!

I’ve actually used this recipe in the past, but couldn’t remember if I’d liked it or if it needed some modifications. I had originally planned to put something other than chocolate chips in the batter for some variety, but then life got in the way and I didn’t really have time for that. Instead, I made these the traditional way, with chocolate chips, and followed the recipe as written.

Verdict? Delicious! However, both Rich and I prefer a slightly more crisp and chewy cookie instead of a cakey one. This recipe makes a more cakey cookie, thanks to the addition of corn starch to the batter. As Anna Olson points out, if you like crispy cookies, just omit the corn starch and use baking powder instead of baking soda. If I use this recipe again, that’s exactly what I will do.

Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe from Anna Olson