Hey now! We love these!
1) Get the unfathomably groovy idea of making them from scratch.
2.) Find a recipe from an esteemed resource who would know from these things.
2a) Strut a little.
3) Make the graham cracker cookie bases, which turn out surprisingly delicious in their own right, and not just as a generic circle to hold the two gooey toppings.
4) Make the marshmallow, which I’ve done before many times using another recipe. Realize that this new recipe is different from the former in several ways, the most notable being that the former did not turn the product into Insta-Cement.
5) Coax the marshmallow from the piping bag onto the cookies with warm, carefully chosen expletives. To which it’s actually responsive, and confirms that the recipe must come from the south. Far, far, FAR south. Like underground south.
5a) Decide next time to use the marshmallow recipe that comes from more northern climes.
6) Melt chocolate. Read the recipe that says to dip the cookies into it by hand. Choose not to spend what would otherwise be a productive evening in the ER with third-degree burns that smell like chocolate, and carefully pour the chocolate onto each marshmallowed cookie. Feel winningly like Jacques Torres.
7) Watch in horror as the marshmallow oozes off each cookie under the heat and weight of the hot chocolate, like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with better ingredients. Try to add more chocolate, but get the same results.
8) Shoot them maybe five different ways, each time having them insist on coming out blurry.
9) Taste one. It’s bloody effing fantastic. Question whether people would find it worrisome if I asked them to shut their eyes, then grope their way into the cookie bag, and then taste them.
10) Take my chances, dip them the way the recipe suggests, and find it works better than my Jacques Torres-y pouring method, even though some still ooze. Realize that there are plenty of people in my circle who are happy eating my kitchen mistakes.
11) Re-panic when I also realize that since I don’t know how to temper chocolate–which the recipe does not even mention needs doing—it means there’s a solid chance the chocolate will have bloomed* by morning.
12) Cheer in a confused way** when even after Day 4, the chocolate topping has not bloomed.
12a) Get seriously cocky.
13) Bake Batch #2 with the worry-free poise of a principal dancer in the Ballet Russe who’s hoisted by a dancer with thighs like carved cedar. Use the favored northern marshmallow recipe, dip, and otherwise treat Batch #2 precisely as I did Batch #1.
14) Swear blue and green the next morning when 2/3 of them bloom.
15) Seek out alternate chocolate topping for Batch #3, to be prepared this weekend.
16) With a fork, chip wedges of cooled chocolate out of the bottom of the Pyrex bowl and poke it into mouth. Do the same with the marshmallowy chocolatey dripped bits that are stuck to the cookie racks.
17) Be soothed.
*Tempering is the method by which chocolate is kept heated to a certain, consistent temperature, and guarantees a glossy finish. If you don’t do it, the chocolate blooms. It doesn’t affect the taste, but it looks funky.
**This isn’t easy. You try it.
Freeze the cookies on a tray before dipping them in chocolate
Wow–I’ve never heard of this. The condensation wouldn’t keep the chocolate from adhering (?)
This looks…divine! π
Why, thank you! π
Looks sooo good, thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much–they really are (despite the craziness)!
Sigh.
Hope it’s a happy sigh, Trina? π
No; the allergic to cocoa sigh π
Oh, that’s right…curses…
You were good to read it, considering that!
π
A former holiday favorite when I was younger (and NOT allergic!).
What are your Christmas treats now?
I love King Leo’s peppermint (when I can find it here in FL), gingerbread (they make excellent, old-fashioned, strong-flavored gingerbread and sell in a tiny shop in Old Williamsburg, VA – yum!; that’s a memory of visiting there with my mom), and a wide variety of Christmas cookies – particularly sugar cookies where the baker (often myself) has taken the time to cut & bake them in holiday and winter shapes (such as sleighs, stars, snowmen, forests of trees π ), spritz cookies with cherries in the center (they remind me of my Italian Aunt “Lee” Yolanda), and those almond crescents – yum. Oooooh, I could go on! Of course, at least one cup of warm, spiced egg nog, too!
And yes, I can order King Leo’s online, but if I don’t find it in person, I figure I have saved myself the calories and protected my teeth from all that sweet sugar! π
I LOVE the gingerbread you’re talking about–I think they call them ginger cookies there–and they’re tucked away in that narrow little bakery on the main street in town! I can taste them right now. And it seems everyone I know who has memories of spritz cookies also associates them with an older female relative from Europe. That’s so lovely. Enjoy every bite of everything!
Christmas is a time to celebrate!
Oh, I am so glad you know of the delightful gingerbread I speak!
~ Wishing you much comfort and joy now and through the New Year ~
I do–I miss it!
~And to you as well π Grateful to have you along on my wacky ride!
So grateful I found you! Grateful to be on the ride with you!
π
Hehehe, I found another post. And they look sooo good. I remember them well, and can eat chocolate again, sparingly. That means like strawberries, I eat it all at once, get over the allergy, then wait until the next year to indulge again. Love gingerbread, our family’s caramel candy where one batch out of 3 comes out okay, and we get the other 2 for ourselves. I don’t make them any more, but my daughter and sis still do, so I get a good supply each year. I do make gingerbread though. And applesauce cake.
Lol, so glad you did π They really were great–yucky looking, but great. I love gingerbread too, and caramels, and you’re right–making caramel is a bear. You blink and it’s a rock. I have a rock in my freezer from one of my whoops batches. I figure I can melt it down for sundaes sometime!
marisa you rock! made me laugh AND made me hungry, AND made me want to make some mallomars!
Hiya Martha–Hee hee π Thanks so much!