PILLOW FLUFF

“Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty.”   – Lora Brody


Alright! So, today’s dessert is one that has me a little unsure of how to categorize it. “Is it a brownie?” “Is it a cookie?” “The frosting makes it kinda cake-like, is it a cake?” I’m really not sure exactly how to explain these little treats except to say that they are super delicious. The marshmallow center gave the original baker the idea to call them “pillows,” which I dig, but somehow this recipe spoke to me in a different way. And so, I decided to re-name them, “Sleeping Cuties.”

I did this for two reasons, 1) when you take these little dudes out of the oven they are insanely soft and delicate. They need at least 3 minutes to firm up on the cookie sheets. And when you do move them to the cooling racks, they needs to be treated like little sleeping babies you don’t want to wake up. The reason for this is that the chocolate chunks are very melty, and make it a little difficult to easily slide them onto the spatula and then onto the cooling rack. Do NOT try to lift them with just your hands, the cookies will squish into a blobby mess.

My second reason for the cookie’s new moniker hit a little closer to home. See, for those of you who don’t know, my father and step-mother are unfortunately getting divorced. And while I’m not going crazy with grief or anything, there are some things I will definitely miss. One of those things being the late-night snacking in the kitchen with my sister, my step-mother, my dad and me.

When my father and step-mom lived in a house upstate together we had a great kitchen/dining room area. And late at night, when all of us should’ve probably been sleeping, we would somehow all individually mosey into the kitchen to grab a late-night snack. For my father that generally included whatever leftovers he had from dinner. If it was Shabbos, my sister and I would pick the softest part of the Challah out from underneath the crust. My step-mother generally just had tea, and maybe a few bites of this or that. But, then, if my sister had been feeling especially awesome that day, there was probably an entire pan of brownies she had made earlier sitting under foil by the stove. Those generally went mostly to me.

Either way, regardless of what we were snacking on, I remember sitting at the counter, all of us, laughing and talking, sometimes in hushed voices because some boyfriend of Sally (my step-sister) or mine was asleep in one of our respective rooms and we didn’t want to risk waking them and having them come in and ruin the fun. You knew a boyfriend was really well liked if they were woken up and asked to come into the kitchen and join us. And while this midnight eating was probably a terrible idea for not only our GI tracts, but also our sleep cycles, we didn’t care, because it was so easy to feel close to one another, whispering in our kitchen over forkfuls of brownie or day-old Pad Thai.

So, while the earth will continue to turn, and things will always change, and things will generally have some sort of end (this is not a morbid, like, there’s no point in caring about anything thing, trust me) I will still miss the little moments like that, which are harder and harder to come by. However, I can recall those memories, and perhaps inaugurate some new friends into the tradition by making these late in the evening, and hoping the smell of wafting cocoa will wake them from their slumber.  

And now…since you’re probably like, “okay, so, isn’t this supposed to be, like, a fun blog about baking???” Here is the recipe for…

SLEEPING CUTIES!

INGREDIENTS:

Cookies:

-       1 pouch of Betty Crocker double chocolate chunk cookie mix

-       ¼ cup vegetable oil

-       2 Tbsp water

-       1 egg

-       2/3 cup chopped pecans (or substitute another nut of choice. The first substitutions that come to mind for me would be walnuts, hazelnuts or macadamias)

-       12 large marshmallows, cut in ½

Frosting:

-       1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

-       1/3 cups whipped cream

-       1 teaspoon butter or margarine

-       1 teaspoon vanilla

-       ½ cup powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS:

1.   Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2.    The term “mise en place” or “everything in it’s place,” is reeeeeeally necessary for this recipe, because you need to be able to move fast. So before you even begin mixing the dough, make sure you’ve cut your marshmallows in half. A way to make this fast and easy is cut these babies with a knife that you’ve run under insanely hot water and then dried off with a towel quickly. The reason is because the heat will make it easy for the knife to slide through the marshmallow without getting all sticky and covered in mallow. You may have to run it under water a couple of times, but it’s worth it, believe me. Not only will it be a cinch to chop the marshmallows, but they’ll end up in perfectly even little halves. They actually look really cute, sitting there all fluffy on the cutting board…

3.   To fix the dough, mix the cookie mix, oil, water, egg and pecans in a large bowl. As you mix (using a spoon! The dough will get caught and gross in a whisk and you’ll spend more time shaking out excess dough from the whisk, then actually stirring) make sure that all of the cookie mix is incorporated into the dough. This takes a little while, and you’ll probably be tempted to add more liquid, but resist the urge. Just keep dipping your spoon underneath the batter and stirring it onto itself, and in around 5 to 7 minutes you’ll have a glossy, chocolate dough, ingredients fully combined.

4. Use a tablespoon to drop dough onto ungreased cookie sheets, 2 inches apart. This dough can get a little sticky, so it helps to set out a paper towel and a little bowl of flour. Fill the tablespoon with flour, shake the flour out, and then go about grabbing spoonfuls to place on the cookie sheets. If the dough begins to stick, gently run your paper towel along the inside of the tablespoon and then repeat the flouring process. After you place a rounded dough ball on the sheet, press into it a little the back of your tablespoon and let it spread out and relax a bit.

5.  Bake the cookies 7 minutes.

QUICK SIDE NOTE:

These cookies smell amazing! Seriously. I know I say it all the time, and it’s generally true, because when does sugar and butter making sweet love in the oven not smell amazing, but, really, my entire apartment smelled like one large cup of hot chocolate. And add a nice, spongy marshmallow on top and it basically looks like you just cut out the mug from a favorite drink.

6.    Remove the cookies from the oven and immediately place one marshmallow half, cut side down, in the center of each cookie, press down lightly to set it, but don’t feel the need to really squish it in.

7.   Return cookies to the oven for 2 minutes, to allow the marshmallows to soften.

8.    Remove cookies from the oven. Allow them to sit and firm up on the cookie sheets for around 3-5 minutes.

9.     Then, ever so gently, preferably using some sort of flat spatula-type thing (i.e. a spatula), transfer the cookies to cooling racks. Mine, as always, take up temporary residence in my cabinets, to keep my cats away.

10.  Let the cookies cool completely, which should take about half an hour.

11.  During that time you can do put in a load of laundry, like me, and then make the frosting.

12.  Add the whipping cream to a small saucepan, let it heat a little, but not boiling, then add the chocolate chips, butter and vanilla. Whisk the ingredients together until they’re all smooth and shiny.

13.  Remove the chocolate mixture from the heat and stir in the powdered sugar in two parts. The sugar might leave little flecks in the top of the chocolate mixture, it’s okay, the more you stir, the more they’ll disappear.

14.  Frost each cookie with the chocolate mixture to cover the marshmallow. I tried two different techniques. One was to dunk the top of the cookie into the frosting and twist it to cover the marshmallow that way, which I didn’t love. The second was my method of choice, and involved me using a butter knife and gently spreading the chocolate over the marshmallow.

15.  Put the cookies in a covered container and let the frosting set.

16.  Devour with a big glass of milk (cow’s, soy, almond, hemp, whatever) and enjoy!

QUICK SIDE NOTE:

Depending on the amount of frosting you use, you might end up with quite a bit of extra. If you do, feel free to save the excess frosting covered in the fridge and use it to add some extra umph to anything from ice cream to a slice of cake that’s lost a bit of moisture. Just make sure you let it come back to room temperature before you re-use, since it’s likely to get a little firm in the cold of the fridge.

CUT TO AFTER BAKING:

These cookies are ingenious! Oh. Mah. Gawd. First, I had to have one that was a little too squishy to make the journey to the cooling rack, and that alone was awesome. But add a slather of frosting to the top? And it is ten times better! The cookies are soft and chewy, the marshmallow center is melty and sticky and has that perfectly sugary taste and cloud-like texture, and the frosting isn’t really thick in a frosting-like way, it’s thick in a really heavy hot chocolate kind of a way. Anyway, all those bits and pieces come together to create a cookie (I’ve decided to call it that so I can get away with having multiple ones, since no one can ever have just one cookie, and generally a serving size for those things are at least two…right?) that is the perfect balance of homey, chocolaty goodness and those special-occasion, “I-can’t-wait-til-next-year,” treats.

In the end, even if you aren’t dealing with something as life-changing as divorce, these cookies are definitely going to provide a pick-me-up when you need it, or simply enhance an already awesome time. Make sure you savor each bite with friends, while chatting late into the evening, and possibly early into the morning.

Til next time,

D