The Daring Bakers' July Challenge - Mallows (Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies)

Before I share this month's Daring Bakers' Challenge with you, I'd like to give you an amazing piece of dietary information. You, too, can eat the decadent treats described below, without fear of putting on even one ounce of weight, if you just follow the advice in this brief, but enlightening, article*:

If you eat something and no one sees you eat it, it has no calories. If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, the calories in the candy bar are cancelled out by the diet soda. When you eat with someone else, calories don't count if you don't eat more than they do. Foods used for medicinal purposes NEVER count, such as chocolate, toast and Sara Lee Cheesecake. If you fatten up everyone else around you, then you look thinner. Broken cookie pieces contain no calories. The process of breaking causes caloric leakage. Things licked off knives and spoons have no calories if you are in the process of preparing something. Examples : peanut butter on a knife when making a sandwich, or ice cream on a spoon when making a sundae. Foods that have the same colour have the same number of calories. Examples : spinach and pistachio ice cream, or mushrooms and white chocolate. Note : chocolate is a universal colour and may be substituted for any other food colour.

I think this article missed one important point: foods eaten at the movies (popcorn, Red Vines, Milk Duds, etc.) have no calories, as they are classified as "entertainment." So, moving beyond our fear of calories, let's get to the good stuff!

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. We had the option of making one or both of the recipes. I chose the Mallows (recipe HERE).

Funny! It was only a couple months ago that I was nostalgically whining to Dan: "Do you remember those chocolate covered marshmallow cookies we used to get as kids? The ones that were round on top and had a cookie base? I haven't seen those in the grocery stores in years, and I'd love to have one!" So you can imagine my delight when the July Daring Bakers' challenge was announced.


I had a lot of fun making them. The base cookies were a breeze - simple little butter cookies with a hint of cinnamon. The recipe made oodles of them, though, so I knew I was going to have some left over. In the end, that turned out to be a good thing . . . but more about that later.



The marshmallow part of the recipe came together quite easily, as well. I remember that my Grandma Rose made marshmallows a couple times for me, and I've always meant to try my hand at them. Once again, the Daring Bakers gave me the kick in the pants that I needed.


The third part of the recipe, the chocolate coating, should have been the easiest, but was the part that gave me a problem. The recipe called for semi-sweet chocolate and a little bit of cocoa butter or vegetable oil to be cooked together. But I didn't follow the recipe exactly (tsk tsk), opting for milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet. Everything looked perfect, but the chocolate stayed sticky instead of forming a crisp shell. I put the cookies in the refrigerator, and they firmed up, but got soft again when I brought them back to room temperature. Not a huge problem. They were just as tasty straight from the refrigerator, and Dan didn't seem to have any problem finding them there.


But refusing to accept defeat, I decided to pull out those extra cookie bases I mentioned above and make some more cookies, using semi-sweet chocolate. I also tinted the marshmallow a soft pink this time around. Success! The chocolate took about two hours to set up, at room temperature, and form a nice hard shell.

These cookies really aren't difficult to make, so I'll probably make them again sometime, but my favorite part of this recipe was making the marshmallows. I remember, about a year ago, buying a tin of "homemade" marshmallows from Williams and Sonoma, for a gift. I think they were about $9 or $10. Now I can make my own, package them in a pretty box, and give them as gifts. Mmmm mmm. Wouldn't they be nice this winter, in a foamy cup of hot chocolate? They could even be flavored with mint or strawberry or . . . well, the sky's the limit. Oh! And I might have to try my hand at making my own Marshmallow Peeps for Sweetpea next spring.

[*The calorie counting advice is not original to me. I saw this somewhere years ago, and just ran across it again in another blog I was reading (http://cherryonacake.blogspot.com/2009/07/coffee-cake-with-chocolate-ganache-n.html)]

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The Daring Bakers' June Challenge - Bakewell Tarts

(With Some "Nostalgia Tarts" Thrown In, for Good Measure)


The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England. (Recipe HERE.)

I had read about these tasty delicacies in British mystery books, but I never really know what they were. There's a lot of lore surrounding the Bakewell Tart and controversy about its origin. One version of the story is that the landlady of an inn, in Bakewell, Derbyshire (England), asked her cook to bake a "pudding" for her guests. There was, however, a failure in communication. What the baker produced was this shortbread pastry shell, with fruit and a topper of frangipane. The guests loved the tart, its fame spread, and it took on the name of the town - the Bakewell Tart, also known as the Bakewell Pudding.

The Bakewell Tart is a classic English dessert, and is sold, today, in English supermarket baking sections and in ready-made, mass-produced forms, some sporting a thick sugary icing and glazed cherry on top for decorative effect. It can be enjoyed best with a nice hot cup of tea.


I chose cherries as my filling, and spent one evening cooking up some delicious cherry jam from fresh store-bought cherries. Dan even bought me a very fancy, 4-cherries-at-a-time cherry pitter!

Making the tarts was not difficult. The crust was sort of like a shortbread, which was pushed into my little tart pans. A fairly thin layer of cherry jam covered the inside bottom of the shell, and then the frangipane topped everything. The main ingredient in frangipane is crushed almonds, and it baked up into something similar to a spongy cake.


Truthfully, I wasn't thrilled with my results. The crust did not have that wonderful shortbread texture that I was expecting, and the overall tart was too sweet and too intensely almond-flavored for my taste. Once again, though, Dan disagreed with my assessment. He really enjoyed them. I baked a few filled with lemon curd, as well as the cherry ones. He thought they were both delish'.

A few days later I decided to try to make some cherry tarts like my Dad used to make in the bakery. I've dubbed them "Nostalgia Tarts." They, too, were made with a shortbread pastry, and filled with cherry pie filling. Dad always formed his from a strip of shortbread with a pinched-up border, to hold in the filling, and with criss-cross strips across the top. I did a few like that, although my criss-cross strips didn't look as neat and tidy as his. The rest I made in my tart pans.

Now THESE were the cherry tarts I remember and love! The shortbread recipe I used for them was perfect. Every bite melted in the mouth. They were definitely best the first day, though. I sealed them in a plastic container, and by the next day the shortbread had softened and lost its tender crispness. They'd make a great dessert for company, as long as they were served the day they were baked.



Ahhhhh! Now THAT'S a cherry tart!

[Oh, and by the way, both challenges - Daring Bakers and Round Robins - had a posting day of the 27th, so don't miss out on the Round Robin Challenge, just below . . . ]

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