A Charming Couple

…Better late than never? The July Daring Bakers’ Challenge was due to post… Oh three days ago. But that’s ok because the cookies are here and ready to go! First off:

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.
Secondly… I call these charming cookies because… Well they’re just that. Charming. I wouldn’t call them gorgeous – they aren’t the sort of showstopper cookies you’d want to serve at a party. But they are tasty, and they have that sort of homeliness that would be very comforting and lovely on a bake sale table. Or in my stomach.This Daring Bakers’ Month I decided to do something different by trying to follow the recipe exactly, without trying anything fancy or messing up. That way if people don’t like it they can’t blame me I can easily go back to the recipe and try to figure out what went wrong. And things went wrong with this. Not huge things, just little things I wasn’t expecting. The Milano cookies were tasty except I felt that there was way too much lemon extract in the actual cookies and then the added orange zest I felt was overkill on the citrus. And I love citrus as much as I love sugar and blue skies. If I were going to try this recipe again, I would probably lesson both the vanilla and the lemon extract because the batter was super alcoholic… As a college student I’m usually all for that but personally it just didn’t work for me in these cookies. That being said, they are much tastier on Day 2, perhaps because the flavors have melded a little better, or perhaps because I like them better frozen. Either way they’ll be eaten pretty quickly.
The mallow recipe itself left a lot to be desired for me. The cookie recipe was fine, the cookies are tasty and biscuit-y, though perhaps a little more crunch would be nicer. The marshmallow recipe, although fun to make in that reminiscent s’mores flavor sort of way, didn’t make nearly enough marshmallow to top the cookies – as you can see from the pictures, there’s a little squirt of marshmallow on my cookies in an attempt to spread it around as much as possible, but it didn’t work. I have plain chocolate covered biscuit cookies. It was a little disappointing.My biggest bone to pick is with the chocolate covering – I don’t know about other Daring Bakers out there, but I used the vegetable oil as suggested in the recipe and the chocolate absolutely refuses to harden or even solidify so these cookies are like the stink bombs of cookies – they get chocolate everywhere and it takes way too much time and energy to try to get all the sticky chocolate off of every surface in the kitchen. Or your hands. Or your clothes. Or your hair. It’s out of control. I froze them for 3 hours to no avail so I’m guessing there’s something up with the vegetable oil. Next time I would try melting wax with the chocolate to give it that chocolate-covered candy feel. The chocolate recipe also didn’t make enough chocolate – I almost had to triple the original chocolate recipe to adequately cover all of my cookies. Frustrating, but all in all still tasty as long as you’re wearing clothes you don’t care about.It was a fun challenge regardless of all the “hardships” encountered – and since I followed the recipe basically to a T, feel free to try it out by following the Daring Bakers link here.

Ps. Please vote for my cupcake at IronCupcake:Earth! Thanks!