Daring Bakers: Milan Cookies

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.

I have a small itsy bitsy confession. I despise making cookies. I can tackle something crazy like a croquembouche head on but to take on something as humble as a cookie strikes massive fear in this amateur baker's heart. You probably wouldn't have known it reading these previous posts but believe me - there was drama behind the scenes of even the most simplest of biscuit fare.

My cookie adventures just never works in one way or two - odd shapes, uneven cooking, uneven browning, cookies that were suppose to take ten minutes to bake end up taking 20. Or 5 to burn. My worst problem? Mass cookie spreadage. No matter what the mixture or batter, they always seem to flatten and spread and more often than not, I'd end up with one baking pan filled with baked cookie. Cutting into my one gigantic baked sheet cookie and trying to pass it off as individual biscuits sure knocks the ego around a bit.

So it was with great trepidation that I tackled this month's challenge (at the last minute mind you) - marshmallow cookies and milan cookies - with our choice to do one or two. Not tempting fate, of course I was going to do one. My dislike of anything remotely marshmallow made this an obvious choice. I took the safe, paranoid route and did many test trays to gauge the speed, girth and verocity of the Milan spreadage. Alas those voodoos I mentioned before all raised their ugly heads in this one recipe.

First tray cooked unevenly so there were half brown, half white cookies. Second tray fared a little better but developed holes and weird cooked meringue spots. What the hell, I muttered at this point. Third tray, it spreaded so thinly that the cookies were virtually translucent. Fourth tray...hallelujah...we have my first Milan sheet cookie!

I salvaged what I could out of my pitiful stockpile and decided to use it as dipping mechanisms on a pot of oozing chocolate, instead of sandwiching them. I also chose not to make the recipe's particular chocolate mix as I had plenty of leftover tart mix and glacage from a beautiful Chocolate Tart that I made recently.

The cookies overall failed to win me over. Not sure if it was the recipe or the cookie itself as I've never tried the original Milano Cookie but I found the taste to be bland and the texture to lack any bite. In fact it seemed the cookie preferred to go soft and chewy even before it sufficiently cooled down. But at least I got rid of some of my frozen egg whites. Either way, it seems the Milan Cookie wasn't to be the Prince Charming that I've been waiting for to break my cookie curse.


Milan Cookies

Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website

Prep Time: 20 min
Inactive Prep Time: 0 min
Cook Time: 1 hr 0 min
Serves: about 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/2 cups (312.5 grams/ 11.02 oz) powdered sugar
7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons lemon extract
1 1/2 cups (187.5grams/ 6.61 oz) all purpose flour
Cookie filling, recipe follows

Cookie filling:
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 orange, zested

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F / 177°C.

In a mixer with paddle attachment cream the butter and the sugar.

Add the egg whites gradually and then mix in the vanilla and lemon extracts.

Add the flour and mix until just well mixed.

With a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 1-inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread. *Tip* - A silicon baking mat is perfect for this.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.

While waiting for the cookies to cool, in a small saucepan over medium flame, scald cream.

Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl, whisk to melt chocolate, add zest and blend well.

Set aside to cool (the mixture will thicken as it cools).

Spread a thin amount of the filling onto the flat side of a cookie while the filling is still soft and press the flat side of a second cookie on top.

Repeat with the remainder of the cookies.