All we’ve learned on how to make cookie coatings with texture, thicker than icing but thinner than frosting, which are also safe for shipping
Up until now we’ve been happy to use either a thin chocolate glaze, a ganache filling/frosting, or a coating made from actual chocolate melted with butter. Ischler Cookies, a chocolate coated sandwich with nutty shortbread and apricot jam, wanted that chocolate/butter coating, but had to dry into something that could be packed in a tin without heroic efforts like cutting out custom sized bits of parchment paper.
We have now (finally!) found two answers to the dilemma. The first is coverture, which is essentially a chocolate coating made with cocoa butter instead of regular butter. This has a higher melting temperature and won’t lead to sticky hands until you get toward body temperatures. Think of chocolate bars and you’ll have it.
The problem with coverture? It’s very hard to find in a store, and impossible to make at home unless you keep cocoa butter in the pantry. Most people don’t.
That leaves fondant. You may know this better in the rollable form that people drape over cakes. But did you also know about pourable fondant, the version used for petit fours and the like? It creates an icing that’s almost indistinguishable from coverture from both the visual and textural perspectives. It’s just a good bit sweeter and less chocolaty inside the mouth. An ideal compromise for anyone who wants to stick with standard pantry ingredients.
Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World does include a basic pourable fondant recipe, but we never really dug into the subject to understand how and why it works. Until now. Enjoy!
NOTE FROM KATE: APPLICATION TRICKS. If you have great many cookies and a lot of fondant, by all means use a screen and pour over it, as described above. However, this requires extra sheets, space, and materials. We tested it, and it works. I personally find that dipping a cookie in while holding it yields an excellent result, without having to make coating, and is better suited to the average home kitchen. The only downside is chocolate on your fingers. But I have an answer! To keep having from washing your hands, or fighting the constant temptation to lick your fingers, try using a thin, snug glove! It sure worked for me and my work moved faster. Also, I had absolutely no desire to lick my glove!
P.S. THE HOT WATER TRICK. Our experiments on chocolate coatings led to a wonderful trick:
The Problem: Chocolate icings begin to harden as soon as they cool, and it often takes a bit too much time to get all your individual cookies dipped or poured.
The Solution: Duh. Keep your icing warm enough to prevent it from cooling too fast. But how?
The Method: You have a bowl of molten coating. Fill a slightly larger bowl with hot water, and place your bowl of icing inside. The hot water will keep the icing warm for twice as long, leaving you all the time you need to work.
Spectacular eastern European mushroom cookies made with a stove top mold
Kate and I are avid foragers who spend a lot of time in the woods hunting for local chanterelles, morels, boletes, maitake, and other species. We do okay.
Kate, the porcini hoard, and tonight’s risotto dinner-in-waitingDown boy! Even edulis is better when cooked. This is the 4-5 gallons (15-20 liters) we draw down each year for gifts.
Every September the local mushroom club hosts a large foray that features a gigantic set of potluck meals supplied by the different members. What did we contribute for 2022? What do you think?
LEFT: poppy seed mushrooms. UPPER LEFT: scottish shortbread leaves. LEFT CENTER: caramel, raspberry, and butterscotch gribochky. CENTER: faux button mushroom caps. BOTTOM: roll and cut mushrooms. RIGHT: laskonky (walnut meringue) mushroom caps. UPPER RIGHT: The insane display made with structural gingerbread trees, poured sugar backdrop, Marshmallo Crispy treat landscape and gingerbread crumb dirt, and two large meringue Lepiotas (or Amanitas, as you wish). NOTE FROM KATE: Oh, definitely Lepiotas!
This article covers our experiments with Gribochky, those colorful little mushroom gems you can see scattered around the display and piled on the bright blue plate. Time permitting, we’ll do another on the other ways to create faux-mushroom illusion cookies. It takes a little fussing, but they’re great fun for baker and eater alike once you get them finished.
We purchased this specialty mold online. It’s the same company that made our walnut (oreshki) molds
Put a small ball of dough in each hole, close, and then cook on the stovetop until done. Both sides of course.
Gribochky is a slavic word that means “mushrooms”, just as the very similar Oreshki means “nuts.” Both are made from a dough so soft that it could even be called a super-thick batter, and both use a unique stovetop mold as shown above. But where Oreshki come out as stamped halves waiting to be filled with a rich and milky caramel, Gribochky come out as solid, 3-dimensional pieces waiting to be decorated. That’s the point when they turn special.
Amp Up The Flavor. We know at least one excellent baker who tried to make Gribochky and came away disappointed. We can’t blame her. The online recipes, which are very similar, produce a cookie so plain that it isn’t worth eating. Boooooring. We solved that by treating the base recipe as a platform rather than an end point. It worked like a charm.
We made two versions for the foray and both came out great. The first had a 1.2 oz package of freeze dried raspberries (crushed into fine dust), with an extra tablespoon or two of butter/other fat for moisture. Delicious, and a perfect way to mimic the sour tang of candy apple boletes that grow under out local oaks. The second included a tablespoon of our Pardubice honey-gingerbread spice mix. Just as good in a totally different way. And it was obvious that any comparable ‘fix’ would have worked just as well. From “yawwwwwn” to “how interesting…” in one easy step! And it’s a step you can take in any direction that suits the spices in your cabinet, the extracts in your drawer, the freeze dried fruit in your local market, and the whims in your heart.
Trust In Tradition. Many will be surprised to see sour cream or mayonnaise listed as an ingredient. Don’t be. It’s quite common in Eastern European recipes, adds tenderness, and provides a certain complicated je ne sais quoi. I may well try some Greek yogurt for our next batch.
Shorten The Flour By A Lot. Those who know us may be surprised to see such a healthy amount of cornstarch. The reason comes down to simple physics. Gribochky would be amazingly thick if treated as a regular cookie, and the gluten from pure flour would make them prohibitively tough. The starch backs that down into plain old crunchy. Yes, we usually prefer to use rice, tapioca, or potato starch. They avoid the danger of a pasty aftertaste, which can happen when you use cornstarch in flat cookies because it breaks down at a higher temperature than the others. The internal temperature of Gribochky gets high enough to remove that fear. Use whatever starch is cheap and convenient.
Cooking Time Varies. The stove top time varies with burner size, flame height, how often you flip, how often you turn, the underlying color of the dough, and probably the moods of your local household gremlin. Heck, sometimes you want a better cooked specimen, and sometimes a blonder one, so the target changes too. The only universal guidelines I can provide are these:
We never got the cookies done in less than 4-5 minutes (2-2½ minutes per side), and usually wanted to add a little bit of time after peeking inside to check for doneness.
It helps to make regular turns to change the angle, which avoids hot spots caused by an uneven flame.
It also helps to flip them over as they cook in order to to equalize the cooking on both sides. Look closely at the photos and you’ll see one batch that looks a little odd because I cooked them first on Side A, and then on Side B. The first side cooked more, leaving a distinct stripe. No one will notice a thing like that in the decorated cookies unless you point it out, but we knew, and so it nettled.
NOTE FROM KATE: I found that preheating the mold gets too heat-dangerous and fussy for me. I made as many balls as we had holes to fill, and rolled them into a conical shape. I placed the wide part of the cone into the cap of the mold in each cavity (both sides, please!) The mold was warm but not too hot, so I could use my fingers to push the dough all the way in. I closed the mold and popped it over the flame. Time it, flip it, go again, and repeat until done. The lack of preheating doesn’t hurt the cookie (you can vary the time or the flame height) and it avoids “casualties.” Also, you don’t burn your fingertips!
DECORATIONS; a/k/a TURNING ON THE MAGIC
There are four parts you can pay attention to on each cookie: (1) the cap, (2) the base, (3) the stem, and (4) the pore/gill layer. The first two matter most, but you can certainly gild the lily by playing with #’s 3 and 4 as well.
Decorating The Caps: We’ve tested two basic techniques for the cap coating. Both worked, and playing with either approach yields a vast number of options. It’s a no lose situation.
The first method centers on melted chocolate. Dark, milk, white, food-dyed-white, and even commercial candy melts – each and every one of them will work. We like to thin them out with a bit of cream, but your mileage may vary.
The best approach is to hold each piece by the stem, dip it into the coating at an angle, and then roll the cookie to cover the entire surface of the cap. Remove, let the excess drip off, and then set them cap up in a place where they can dry without flattening one part of your coating. Egg cartons worked great, with ice cube trays a very close second.
Dark chocolate, textured by accident because I melted it without any cream, cocoa butter, or other fat to make it thinner and smoother. I love the contrast created by painting the “pores” bright yellow.
We also tested chocolate chips, but they didn’t work nearly as well. Chips are carefully designed to not melt, and overcoming that is like fighting the tide. First you must add cream to help them melt evenly. Then you find that they harden, curdle, and/or to harden in inconvenient ways despite the cream. And then they’ll suddenly discolor if you try to keep them warm on the stove top. I can’t recommend chips except for something odd like butterscotch chips, which do double duty as a coating and a unique flavor addition.
NOTE FROM KATE: instead of cream, I prefer using cocoa butter melts. They help your chips or chocolate melt, loosening the mix and helping with dipping properties, but they also yield in a nice and solid surface with none of the tackiness that cream can cause. We winged it with the chips here. For exact instructions, kindly refer to our “Chocolate coverture” recipes associated with chocolate-dipped marshmallow treats.
Butterscotch chips for the cap. It was a PITA but we made it work! White chocolate base, with poppy seed dirt. BTW… did you notice the stripe on the left hand cookie? That’s the one where I forgot to flip them as I cooked.
Butterscotch chips cooked into a dark caramel. Still usable and edible, but it came at the cost of frayed tempers and a few choice words that cannot be shared in public. They looked pretty good anyway, and could have been great if we had enough time and energy to paint the underside of the cap.
The other cap technique uses molten sugar. The prettiest of them all is a candy apple coating made from “hard crack” sugar syrup mixed with some bright red food dye. Your target is 300°-310° F (149°-154° C). Caramel works well for light and dark browns.
The problem here comes down to safety. 310° sugar syrup can burn you badly enough to leave obvious scars. No bueno. We came up with a workaround, but it requires three hands. Hand #1 steadies the pot. Hand #2 holds the cookie stem in a pair of tongs, dips it into the hot syrup, rolls it around to get even coverage, and then lets the excess drip back into the pot. Hand #3 then takes the cookie out of the tongs with a pair of chopsticks, inverts it, and lays it out in an ice cube tray (cap up) to dry. NOTE: The sugar is so hot and so sticky that it will melt a styrofoam egg carton, and pull off shreds of a cardboard one. Yes, the cardboard easily peels away from the cooled cookie, but better to avoid the issue in the first place. NOTE FROM KATE: peel cardboard bits off the sugar with fingers, then moisten a small brush and work the surface over a bit. When in doubt, remember that you are making the cookies healthier by incorporating an extra microdose of fiber!
The upside? Behold!
Candy Apple Gribochky
Gotcha! These aren’t cookies. They are the real life Candy Apple Bolete, Exsudoporus frostii. Nature’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
Decorating the Base: This step is easier because there aren’t many options, all of them are easy, and the shape can be handled with fingers alone. Did you know that mushrooms are actually the fruit of the fungus and not the main entity? The apple of the tree? ‘Struth! The main body is called “mycelium” and will be spread in a mat over a relatively vast area in and around the soil or the nearby wood. This is what you’re seeing at the bottom of mushrooms poked fresh out of the ground.
Mycelium is almost always some shade of white or pale yellow, and is easy to replicate with white chocolate or a tinted candy melt. Add poppy seeds or cookie crumbs for “dirt” and presto! Your illusion is complete on both top and bottom.
The Underside Of The Cap: Mushrooms with this shape will have either gills or pores on the underside of the cap. Adding this layer is a special touch that true mushroom geeks will appreciate, but it’s very hard to see unless you make it a bright, contrasting color like the yellow-on-dark specimen up above.
Gills can be any color of the rainbow, but most people will want to make them white, pink, or cocoa brown to imitate the best known species. Lilac will make the mushroom hunters happy. Mushroom pores will be white, yellow, pink, or red at this spot in the vast majority of cases, sometimes with blue or brown bruising on the surface.
Decorating the Stem. Stem features, ironically enough, are often the most useful part of a mushroom for field identification. For Gribochky? They’re an afterthought, because the features are impossibly subtle to duplicate. The only time it’s worth an effort is something along the lines of painting/dipping the stem to make it white, and that only makes sense when you’re trying to model an Amanita or Agaricus (see below). OTOH, adding berries or food dye to the actual dough can be a fantastic trick for species like the red Candy Apple Boletes. That, and cooking the Gribochky to a lighter or darker shade of brown, is almost always enough to complete a high quality illusion.
A Few Common Mushrooms To Mimic.
The so-called “toadstools” with white spots on top are in the genus Amanita. These can have caps ranging from bone white through basically any color, have white gills, almost always have a white stem with a ring of extra tissue about 2/3 of the way up.
Supermarket button mushrooms are in the genus Agaricus. They have white caps with white stems, and gills that start off pink before aging into brown. These will also have a ring on the stipe. Oh! And the answer is “yes.” Store bought mushrooms are all the same species, Agaricus bisporus. The little buttons are babies, cremini are teenagers, and portabellas are full sized grownups.
White chocolate “agaricus” with chocolate “gills.” This was our very first effort, and the illusion is as poor as any version you’ll ever made. And it doesn’t exactly suck even so, does it? Gribochky are show stoppers, plain and simple.
The pored mushrooms, a/k/a boletes, are my personal specialty and it pains me intensely to mention some but not others. You can find a list of every North American species at The Bolete Filter, written by yours truly under a different hat. The true “porcini,” a/k/a Boletus edulis and its close cousins, will have a yellow, orange, light red, or light brown cap with a white or yellow pore surface.
CONCLUSION
Gribochky are a perfectly acceptable eating cookie once you kick up the flavor with berries or spices, in the same way as Vanilla Snaps and the like, but their real glory lies in the illusion. There are other techniques one can use to create the illusion of a mushroom out of different kinds of cookies. They work too, particularly as part of a scene. But none allow for this level of absurd creativity, let alone the chance to customize things toward a copy of real life species. Fun, fun, fun!
Yes, the cookies require a special mold, and can definitely qualify as “fussy” on the decorations side if you try to copy real life. But the results can be shockingly beautiful, especially if you take the relatively easy step of dipping the bottom to mimic the mycelium, and then adding in poppy seeds or cookie crumbs to mimic the dirt. They start at “Cool!” and work their way up to “Spectacular.”
If pure, visual fun is your thing – or mushrooms! – this is a cookie that needs to be in your repertoire.
Raspberry candy apple, dark caramel-spice, and butterscotch-spice Gribochky
Part 1 of a 5-part series about those chocolate coated treats you adored as a child. This is the overview.
This is by far the most challenging recipe we’ve undertaken even though the basic instructions for all of the 73,000 variations could not be simpler:
Make a simple, basic cookie base.
Make a marshmallow filling and pipe it on top of the base.
Cover with a thin coat of snappy chocolate.
Easy, right?
Well, maybe the cookie part… until you account for the infinite variations and my obsessive need to test each and every one. But that’s just volume of work, not difficulty, and I can sum it up quickly. (A) any plain cookie of the proper size will work, and we took great delight in playing around. It’s almost shocking at how big a difference you can create by shifting to a cardamom, cinnamon, or gingerbread flavored base in lieu of the classic Vanilla or Graham Wafer. (2) Straightforward shortbreads like your favorite butter cookie will also work. But (3) It is vital to keep the intensity under control, so the base to be a partner in the enterprise, and not a dominator. If you’re starting from a standard spice cookie (a/k/a “snap”), cut the amount of featured flavor in half.
The marshmallow fillings posed a bigger problem. We are bakers, not candy makers, which created a learning curve issue before we could start narrowing down toward the perfect version. I discovered there are two basic approaches to making a homemade marshmallow: the U.S. gelatin-only version, and the European Italian-meringue version. Both recipes work… if you want to make a marshmallow to eat out of hand. They emphatically do not work when you’re after an ultra-light, not too sweet marshmallow filling!
The solution came down to food chemistry in action, as discussed in this online grade school experiment. All marshmallows have a certain proportion of corn syrup (glucose) in addition to regular sugar (sucrose). They must, because at these concentrations you need to combine the two sweeteners in order to prevent crystallization. If you do the experiment, you’ll learn that a higher percentage of corn syrup yields a fluffier but less sweet product. Ding ding! That was exactly what I wanted! The two marshmallow fillings have different proportions, but raising the level of glucose pretty much solved the problem. More than solved. Taste testers actually stopped to ask, “how did you get this texture?”
Then came the third kind of marshmallow… but that’s the tale of Part 5.
The chocolate coatings drove poor Kate nigh unto madness. [NOTE FROM KATE: Ahem! “To a level of high frustration.” Husbands.] Here’s the problem in a nutshell: you’re trying to duplicate cheap, commercial, pseudo-chocolate shells using quality products in a homemade environment. So how the devil could you create that thin, snappy shell at room temperature without all the apparatus of industry?
Back to the food chemistry research I went, where I discovered that the answer lies in the kind of fat you use to thin out the chocolate. Think of it this way. You’re really trying to create a version of the “magic shell” liquid used to coat ice cream. That is nothing more than melted chocolate thinned with coconut oil. It works because the cold ice cream hardens the oil to create a shell. Leave your finger on that shell, and the spot you’re touching will turn soft and gooey because the heat of your body is higher than the melting point of coconut oil.
What we needed for Chocolate Marshmallow treats was a fat that would harden/soften at body temperature rather than room temperature. Industry uses palm oil, which does just that and is also cheap. But palm oil is evil. The combination of slave labor and environmental havoc behind that industry means that we won’t have anything to do with it. Palm oil was out. Cocoa butter was in.
For what it’s worth, our taste runs toward a classic dark chocolate coating, but white and milk versions will also work, and sprinkles, sparkles, or stripes, ground nuts, espresso powder, & etc. could be used to guild the lily. Oh yes! You can also flavor the chocolate with a touch of coffee or liqueur.
Permutations Multiplied By Possibilities; And Again; and Again; and Again.
Look at the options we had at this point in time. Start with cookie bases limited only by your imagination; multiply by two marshmallow fillings that can be piped in any shape; multiply again by literally any extract buried away in your spice cabinet; multiply a fourth time all the different forms of chocolate; multiply a final time for the ways you can flavor that chocolate; and then consider all the ways you could decorate those final products.
You could fill an entire bakery with that many variations, and still have ones you left out. Macarons 2.0, done and ready to publish. Right? Not exactly. It turns out there is a third kind of marshmallow, which will blow your mind unless you grew up in Eastern Europe.
Zefir, named after the gentle southern wind,is a marshmallow that starts from a base of concentrated fruit. But that doesn’t do it justice. They don’t taste of “fruit” so much as FRUIT!!!! The level of pure flavor is almost hard to believe, especially when you factor in the distinctly sour tang that no extract could even begin to imitate. It’s like nothing else we’ve ever come across.
Zefir are usually sold on their own, with neither a cookie base nor a chocolate coating. But both variations exist on store shelves in every country from Poland and the Czech Republic eastward into Central Asia, and no study centered on marshmallow fillings would be complete without at least mentioning Zefir as a potential variation.
Alas, but Zefir are also a maddening puzzle we still haven’t cracked! The basic method could be the simplest one of all, and it has worked spectacularly for both sour apple and raspberry versions. But it’s also failed completely with some other fruits, and we’ve yet to understand why. So part five of this series is a work in progress. We can promise results for the apple and raspberry versions, but things get inconsistent after that.
CONCLUSION
Macarons are a very elegant, grownup treat. Chocolate Marshmallow Treats make your inner child jump up and down like a vibrating six year old. But the two cookies share something in common: they can be made in endless, high-end variations that deserve to be tucked into elegant little boxes for a nifty markup. If you’re a bakery owner, take me at my word and do a few “Why not?” experiments of your own. It could be the start a whole new trend, and it’s as simple as 1, 2, 3:
Cookie Base, flavored with anything you want;
Marshmallow Filling, flavored with anything you want; and
Chocolate coating, flavored with anything you want, and decorated as you desire.
It took us forever to get each of those pieces capital-R Right, but none of them is hard on its own once you have the recipe. So don’t be daunted! People across the world will bow at your feet once you master the simple tricks that let you make these for gifts, parties, and sales. Wait a sec… Let me lodge the protest on your behalf:
“Across the world?” Come on Scott. Why the exaggeration? We all know this treat from childhood. It’s hardly the sort of thing that would make people all over the world go wild!
Part 2 of a 5-part series about those chocolate coated treats you adored as a child. This examines the cookie base.
This should be a short post because it has a relatively simple, if far-reaching, message. Most of us grew up with a single version of Chocolate Marshmallow Treats. That’s the one that will feel “right,” while everything else is an experiment. But that version is not “right” to the rest of the world. There are almost infinite ways to customize these cookies, and a great many of those variations have been popular in some part of the world even if they were unknown in yours. So when you look at the different options for the cookie base, start by considering the options and possibilities.
Chocolate Marshmallow Treats can build on almost any kind of cookie base, and shifting that part up will completely change the effect for the loved ones who are privileged to share your bounty. We really did test this, and the distinctions aren’t exactly subtle. Indeed, the best advice we can give is this: keep the amount of flavor in your cookie base down to a hint rather than a dominant feature. You want the cookie part to mesh with the marshmallow and the chocolate, not fight them for dominance.
The recipes we tested include:
Commercial Vanilla “Wafers” – on the smaller side, but absolutely delicious as a plain, almost invisible foundation. The marshmallow filling will soften them in the beginning, but time will help them to crisp back up a little.
Homemade Vanilla Snaps
Homemade Vanilla Snaps – Step up your game from “plain” to “elegant” with a homemade version.
Graham Cracker Snaps – I grew up with MallomarsTM as my personal norm. Those come with a graham cracker base that evokes a S’more. See below for an elegant homemade version that’s worth eating out of hand as well as inside a cookie.
Spice Snaps – See the master recipe below, or use your personal favorite with about half as much spice as you’d use for a free standing cookie. Full-flavored snaps aren’t partners so much as pushy, wannabe overlords.
Cocoa Spice Snaps with marshmallow only, white chocolate, and dark chocolate
Shortbread Wafers (Commercial or Homemade) – You just can’t lose when buttery goodness comes to town.
Miniature Cake Rounds (No Recipe Provided) – This is as common as can be among the commercial versions, but you won’t see a recipe here. We do cookies, thank you very much, not cake. (I might also be just about done with experimenting by now…)
No Cookie Base – Omit the base and you get a candy rather than a cookie. Same issue as the cake base. Besides, I have zero doubt that anyone who reads this will be able to figure this one out on their own.
Want to play? Lemon curd dots to go inside the marshmallow!
CONCLUSION
That covers it folks. Expand out from here. But please pause for a moment and look at how we’re already multiplying out! So many choices for just the cookie part. And believe me, there are just as many options when it comes to the marshmallow filling.
Today you get a big, fat note from Kate, because I’ve somehow become the family chocolate dipper.
Oh, we’ve all tried it, and we all have our tricks.I’m the one who gets to share the final results with you, though, because I strongly believe in the Power of Chocolate. It is, after all, its own separate food group!
[NOTE FROM SCOTT: It also has magic powers. I know this from long experience with both a wife and two daughters. “Just stand back and throw some chocolate at her” isn’t a joke, it’s a survival mechanism. The masculine life expectancy in America soared in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s. Hershey’s went into business in 1894. Coincidence? You lay your bets, and I’ll lay mine.]
We’ve been dipping various cookies in chocolate for years, as evidenced by the recipes in Volume I of the Heritage Cookies Cookbook. A careful observer may notice that the quality of our chocolate dip in some of those photos isn’t nearly as smooth and shiny as commercially made products. There is a reason for that. First, we are home bakers, not chocolatiers.
Sure, I could invest into (a few more) additional pieces of equipment. Then, because tempering chocolate is best done at volumes larger than we usually use, I could sink an inordinate amount of money into ingredients only to learn how to temper chocolate properly. But… really?
Friends, chocolate ain’t cheap. Never was. And neither is time. Therefore, I am forever grateful for every little trick, as well as for those immense bricks of good-enough, affordable chocolate from Trader Joe’s. They do a pretty good job for most our applications. For fussier cookies we’ll buy Callebaut or Valrhona, and for convenience, Scott is willing to use those commercially available chocolate melts. But that doesn’t get us into the main point of this article.
Why is high-quality, commercially produced chocolate so pretty and shiny, and how can one do that at home? I’m not a chocolate expert so I’ll give you the shorthand as I understand it.
Cocoa butter, the off-white fat that forms the bulk of the chocolate we eat, crystallizes into several different forms. Of those, the beta-crystals are the ones that produce a smooth and shiny surface. If you melt your chocolate under exacting, well-controlled conditions, working the softened product under controlled humidity, concentration, temperatures, and timing, you will end up with tempered chocolate. Such conditions can be achieved for the home baker, but they require low air humidity, a large marble or granite board, and a certain minimum volume.
Plus, of course, practice.
But there is a shortcut! Properly tempered chocolate is chock-full of beta-crystals. It snaps upon breaking, and the break is smooth instead of crumbly. The chocolate’s surface shines with that undeniable gleam of quality and good taste.
Commercial chocolate makers, who process tons of material, have their processes tightly in check. The less-expensive brands also stretch their batches with extra fillers (powdered milk and lots of extra sugar), flavorings, emulsifiers, and various fats to act as melt conditioners. You will notice that cheap chocolate has a list of ingredients as long as Twinkies, whereas high-quality chocolate will have fewer than you can count on your fingers.
Technically speaking, the final product requires only cocoa butter, cocoa, and sugar. But there is an inexpensive, readily available product that works even better if you are willing to turn a blind eye toward certain other factors.
To Palm Oil Or Not To Palm Oil, That Is The Question
Palm oil is entirely edible, tasteless, inert, and has a combination of high molecular weight and melting characteristics that allow you to easily thin chocolate enough to produce a hard, thin layer at room temperature. These properties, its low cost, and its ability to substitute the more expensive cocoa butter, makes it ideal for a whole slew of commercial applications.
NOTE FROM SCOTT: Wilton, the maker of Candy Melts™ sells a product called “EZ Thin Dipping Aid.” That is the product to use if you’re willing to go the palm oil route. It works like a charm and is the perfect solution used across the board by the baking industry. So why do we go to all this effort to avoid it? Well…
Coatings, fillings, cakes – even tortillas! Palm is an incredibly useful product for a host of culinary purposes; so useful that human greed has gotten involved to change the calculus. Entire tropical rain forests were cut down to make space for palm plantations, where brutal working conditions approaching slavery are routinely employed. And there is absolutely no way to source palm oil from only the “good actors.”
Understand: palm oil is no worse than anything else from the chemistry and biology points of view. It is a fat, with all the pluses and minuses that entails, and a particularly desirable one because of its unique characteristics. But our family will not willingly contribute toward either environmental devastation nor human degradation, and so palm oil has now become a product that we actively avoid whenever possible. You will not find it in any of our recipes until we’ve been convinced that the problems were solved.
If Palm Oil Is Out, What Then?
So what do you do when you’ve ruled out the cheap, convenient, and chemically ideal ingredient as your melting aid? We ended up resorting to the more expensive, natural and equally ideal cocoa butter. You know, the stuff that actually belongs in chocolate!
A quick online search revealed that cocoa butter is available in convenient melt discs. A purchase under $20 lasted us through great many chocolate projects, so a little goes a long way. Make sure to get the food-grade, as many less-expensive brands are intended for cosmetic use only.
What did we try before cocoa butter?
“Everything.”
It feels like it, anyway. Butter, cream, and various oils all got a whirl in our kitchen. Our younger daughter is a great fan of coconut oil as the magic ingredient for the “magic shell” used to coat ice cream. That texture is exactly what you want for Chocolate Marshmallow Treats too, but it just doesn’t work at room temperature. The coating stays solid when it’s down at ice cream temperatures, but it turns tacky on cookies and becomes downright runny if your room turns warm.
Butter and cream will also lower viscosity (i.e., the chocolate melt is thinner) but they won’t give you that shiny surface and can also remain sticky. Vegetable oil works to thin the result and it helps the melting process, but the chocolate remains even runnier because the melting point is that much lower.
We found that cocoa butter was the only alternative that really worked. It has the right combination of both melting point and melt properties to help soften the chocolate thin it for a good dip – but also gets hard enough to avoid being sticky at room temperature. Think of every other chocolate! They melt in the mouth, not on the plate.
But What About The Pretty, Shiny Part?
Aha! You want to grow beta-crystals.
Think back to that sugar crystallization experiment from elementary school. You coated a wet string in sugar crystals, put it into the saturated liquid, and then watched the crystals grow over the next few days. Those initial crystals were key to giving a platform for the crystals to form. You had to seed the string.
In exactly the same way, you can seed your microwave-melted chocolate with beta-crystals by adding solid grating of an expensive, shiny, properly tempered chocolate you bought at the store. If you fail to do that, the chocolate won’t look shiny after it sets. A day or five later, depending on how humid it is, you’ll notice the chocolate’s surface breaking into light and dark structures. The chocolate is blooming with the growth of unwanted, non-beta crystals.
Compare the two enrobed treats in the photo below:
So here you have it. You will find that white chocolate melts differently from all other chocolates, because it has a slew of various other ingredients. I had to add more cocoa butter to help it melt and got a thin coating as a result. Milk chocolate is the best-behaved and least likely to seize. Which brings us to a sticky situation:
What If Your Chocolate Seizes?
Seizing refers to a phenomenon where you are melting chocolate, stirring it, and it suddenly thickens into a grainy, thick, clay-like mass. Seizing occurs when a droplet of water accidentally splashes into your melt. A steamy kitchen has been reported as a culprit in cookbooks. The cocoa butter crystallizes into the “wrong” crystals, locking its structure into something you can’t easily use.
Overheating your chocolate will make it more prone to seizing. The darker the chocolate, the easier it is for it to seize, too.
But there is a fix: Add boiling water one tablespoon at a time, stirring vigorously. The water will dissolve the structure of the crystals, and give you a chance to melt-and-seed as described above.
This being said, I have not tried to make chocolate coverture with a melt that has seized and been rescued. I don’t know how the final product would set, and whether it would bloom or not. However, this chocolate can be used for any other melted chocolate application. If you make ganache, you can save it for a cake filling, brownies, or truffles you’ll probably be making down the line.
I hope this helps. Keep playing with it and expect to have a ruined batch every so often. Since no chocolate is wasted unless you burn it, this experimentation is a low-stakes learning curve. Let us know how this worked for you, and please share tips of your own!
NOTE FROM SCOTT: As you might expect, we made a lot of coated treats in the process of recipe development over the past several months. A lot of them looked perfect when made, and perfect the next day, but mysteriously bloomed after a few days out on the table by the window (we being too lazy to store them properly). Poor Kate was beside herself, figuring that all her careful work had gone wrong. (NOTE FROM KATE: Not “beside myself.” I am entirely too cool a cat for that. More like, pissed off and frustrated. This might have something to do with the fact that I dejunked our excess storage containers 😉
Then, one late morning, en route to a work-break bit of snitching, I noticed that the cookies were positively glowing in the sunlight; and made my fingers sticky in an extremely tattle-tale way. Aha! The penny dropped. The chocolate coating was heating past the critical stage and then re-hardening in a random way without the benefit of beta crystals to guide the process! The result? A coating that bloomed with big white splotches after it rehardened.
It tasted just as good before and after. I assure you; I tested that feature thoroughly, and with great attention to detail. But it is a lesson to remember. Leave your chocolate out in the sun, and it will lose its temper, have a tantrum, and go all white in the face.
To Mold Or To Pour?
The neatest solution is to spend a few bucks on a silicone chocolate mold. Paint the inside of that with your chocolate coating, set it aside to harden, and then fill it with your marshmallow. Top that with your cookie, or some complementary jam and then your cookie. Chill a little more, and then unmold.
Perfect every time unless your coating somehow sticks to the silicone.
Part 3 of a 5-part series about those chocolate coated treats you adored as a child. This examines the marshmallow fillings.
Part 1 of this series provided an overview of this massive project, with some notes about the problems we ran into.
Part 2 listed several recipes we developed for different cookie bases: Vanilla, Spice, Graham Cracker, and Shortbread. You can also use a thin cake round, but we left that one out because this is, after all, a project devoted to heritage cookies.
This Part 3 examines the two main approaches to creating a marshmallow filling. There is a third approach too, for fruit-based Zefir marshmallows, but I’ve moved that discussion over to its own Part 5.
Piped with a round tip onto commercial wafers
Piped with a star tip onto commercial wafers
Rose, Vanilla, and Banana on homemade Vanilla Snaps. Color coded with a few drops of food dye.
The Internet offers a metric ton of recipes for homemade marshmallows, most of which work pretty well. They’re the world’s easiest candy. Basically:
Start with a thick and sticky substrate (made from the marshmallow plant in antiquity);
Heat a sugar syrup to the soft ball stage (235‑240 °F a/k/a 112-115 °C), using a combination of table sugar (sucrose) and corn syrup (glucose) syrup to prevent crystallization; and then
Whip the sugar syrup into the substrate until it balloons up to create fluffy marshmallows. These can be piped while warm, or else cooled in a pan to make cut-out eating marshmallows.
The American version uses a lot of gelatin to make that sticky substrate. The European version uses whipped egg whites with less gelatin; i.e., is a gelatin-strengthened Italian Meringue. NOTE: French meringue is egg white whipped with sugar; Italian meringue is egg white whipped with hot sugar syrup; and Swiss meringue is egg white heated to around 170-175 °F (76-79 °C) before being whipped. Swiss is stiffer and more stable than Italian, which is stiffer and more stable than French.
Problem #1: The filling was denser and sweeter than we wanted.
Think of a classic marshmallow you eat out of hand. They have a distinct chew to them, right? It’s part of the appeal. Now think of that chocolate covered marshmallow treat you grew up with. Much less chewy! And a bit less sweet, because flavor also comes from the cookie base and the chocolate topping. The The cookie would not be perfect until we got a handle on the problem.
Fair enough, but how do you change a marshmallow recipe to achieve those targets? It can obviously be done – the commercial products prove that – but we had to figure out how. And that was a major pain in the whosis, because our expertise on the baking side did not extend into this kind of candy making and sugar work.
The first and most obvious solution (cutting cut back on the amount of gelatin) proved to be impossible. Cut back too far and the structure dissolves rather than getting lighter, and I could not fidget my way into a perfect balance because kitchen scales only have so much precision. Plus the marshmallows were far too sweet for this use, and cutting back on the sugar too created other textural issues. I fought this problem for months, and ended up with a pair of solutions that work hand in hand.
Kate gets 100% of the credit for the first. She noticed that our trusty stand mixer began to really strain as the marshmallow mix cooled down. Part of this came from how the filling thickened as it cooled, but the overflowing bowl factored in too. Her solution? Shrink the recipe by a third. Huge difference. The lower volume resulted in a fluffier marshmallow because the machine wasn’t slowing down, and also because the bowl had extra room to accommodate it.
I claim credit for the second solution. I posted the question on some Internet groups/boards, and no one seemed able to help. All I got were suggestions for vegan substitutes that could be used instead of gelatin. That wasn’t the issue! Vegan shmegan; I just wanted to know what was going on in the chemistry, and how to adjust it. One long-suffering volunteer finally burst out with, “maybe you should take a food science class or two.”
Ding ding! For some reason I’d done all my Internet searches using the words “chemistry,” “physics,” and descriptions like “fluffier” and “denser.” I’d never done one using the term “food science.” Why not try? I did, and up popped this lovely article on a project for grade school science teachers: “Sweet Science – Making Marshmallows.” I urge you to read it, but here’s a quick summary in case you want to save some time. Loosely translated, the project reads as follows:
“Have your students make marshmallows with different proportions of sugar to corn syrup, and then measure the characteristics. They’ll find out that more sugar equals a denser and sweeter product, while a higher ratio of corn syrup reverses that. Then you can let the kids eat their experiment, and send the sugared-up darlings off to some class with a colleague you don’t like.”
Okay, I added that last last sentence on my own. But look at what it says! Lighter, and less sweet. Exactly what I wanted. We did the experiment; it worked just as predicted; and the results now appear in the recipes below.
Plus there’s this: Now you have the power too! By way of reference, American eating marshmallows have a sugar:syrup ratio of 6:1 by volume. That’s now at 3:2 for the cookie filling, which coincidentally works out to just about 1:1 by weight. This is just about perfect for us, but you can fuss with it to your heart’s content to find the proportion that’s perfect for you. Tastes differ. Though it must be said that we achieved a texture so “right” that our testers actually singled it out for special compliments! Yes, you really can tell.
Problem #2: Piping the Marshmallow was a P.I.T.A.
There’s no easy way to say this. I suck at piping. And that is a problem because this is a recipe where you need to work quickly. Cooled marshmallow filling stiffens, is harder to pipe, and tends to mound up unevenly instead of covering the whole cookie in a pretty layer. Nor does it help that our biggest piping bags are “mediums” on anyone else’s scale. Even the reduced recipe required us to refill the bag two or three times, which led to the filling cooling off that much faster, and becoming that much… You get the idea.
Marshmallow gets stiffer as it cools, and won’t pipe out cleanly.
In the end I found three solutions that worked pretty well.
Scott’s Solution. Rope in Kate or a daughter to cover for my sorry efforts. This works perfectly, and I recommend it highly.
The Doh! Solution. Buy a bigger bag. Maybe next time. They aren’t as easy to find as you’d think.
Solution #3. Prepare two or three of the medium-sized bags before you start to pipe the cookies out. This saves a few critical minutes, and also lets you use more than one tip.
Yes, I am overselling the difficulty a bit. Anyone with the right tools and some basic skills won’t find it as challenging as I did. The multiple-bags approach also solves a lot of the problem, and the cookies taste just as good even if the marshmallow cools enough to come out lopsided. Still, forewarned is forearmed. Be ready to pipe as quickly and efficiently as you can; and/or to laugh at your funky shapes.
Problem #3: The Infinite Variations
Continuing the theme from Parts 1 and 2, the marshmallow filling can also be varied in as many ways as your imagination permits. And it’s super simple to do!
So-called “plain” marshmallows are flavored with vanilla extract. An even teaspoon works perfectly at these amounts. “Flavored” marshmallows replace the vanilla with with any extract and/or food color that’s buried in your spice cabinet, and that same 1 tsp. will do the job just as well. Lemon, rose, rum, banana, coffee, mint, almond… there is some place in the world where that flavor of marshmallow is a beloved favorite sold in stores. I recommend some color coding to avoid frowns of confusion, but it really is that easy.
Spices work too but we found that spiced cookie bases were easier to control. Marshmallows have a ton of air, and adding enough spice to provide solid flavor can make them a little gritty.
Fruit flavors are a little different. The extracts work fine for a properly artificial flavor reminiscent of commercial products, but you can also get The Real Thing by making Zefir instead of a classic marshmallow. Talk about intense essence of fruit…! But that’s getting ahead of myself. I moved that discussion to Part 5 for very good reason, and you’ll simply have to wait.
CONCLUSION
It took some serious work and research to nail down the filling part of this cookie, but that really came down to exploring things at the food science level. [It had nothing to do with me being obsessive, no matter what my piping assistants may say!] If you follow the recipe below – either one – you will find it quick, easy, and effective. You’ve got your wheel, and there’s no need to recreate it.
So where are we at?
Make a simple cookie base, flavored in any way you can imagine.
Pick your choice of marshmallow approach, and flavor it with any extract or liqueur in your cabinet by substituting 1:1 for the designated vanilla, and color coding with a touch of food dye.
Pipe your marshmallow creation onto your choice of cookie, using your choice of piping tip.
Bing, bang, boom. You’ve got these Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Treats 70% done. All that remains is coating them in everyone’s favorite darkest-brown food of the gods.
Did you know? This world famous cookie with the evocative name is actually part of a pair
This is one of those classic recipes I’ve been meaning to try for ages because it has the world’s most evocative name, but kept putting off because it looked too easy. I have seen many dozens of recipes, maybe hundreds of recipes, and they are basically all the same. What could I possibly have to add? Yes, the formalities had to be observed. We really do bake every recipe we publish, over and over until we have it right, so I knew that sooner or later I’d have to go through the motions. But I will admit that Cat Tongues fell into that rare group where my inner Scrooge kept insisting, “Why bother?”
Was he ever wrong! It took me several different batches to penetrate the subtleties behind this cookie, and then an explanation from our extremely French friend before I finally got the underlying point: Cat Tongues aren’t a standalone cookie at all, but rather something new that I’ve never played around with before.
So there was a lot of reason to bother. I only regret that I waited this long.
How Often Do You See A Mathematically Perfect Recipe?
The French are a very orderly people, at least on the cooking side, and few things show that more than the traditional recipe for Langues de Chat:
Equal weight of butter;
Equal weight of powdered sugar;
Equal weight of egg white;
Equal weight of flour; and
A hint of salt with a touch of some aromatic “extra” such as citrus zest, spice, or vanilla.
That’s it. A kitchen scale should let you multiply the recipe up or down with no effort at all.
Note To [Shall Not Be Named]: Yes, I really do mean “no effort at all.” Start with the bowl for your mixer. Put that on your scale, tare to zero, and then add the butter. Make a note of the weight, which should be 115 grams for a single stick, give or take. Set the mixing bowl aside, and put a new, smaller bowl on the scale. Tare to zero, and crack in your egg whites, saving the yolks for the custard you’re making alongside. Get to that same weight or below, and then set this aside too (as discussed below, there is no issue if the egg whites come in underweight). Repeat with a bowl for the powdered sugar, and then again for the flour. A,B,C and alakazam: you are ready to go.
Problem #1: The Egg Whites Did Not Cooperate
For our testing I chose to normalize around the weight of a standard U.S. stick of butter, which is 4 oz = 115 g. The conversion tables may say that equates to around three (3) egg whites, but that is only true if they’re Jumbos. The regular Size Large whites from our local supermarkets averaged out to more like 32-33 grams apiece, meaning that three was too little (about 95-100 g), but four was too many (≈ 125-130 g).
I solved this by using four and spooning off the excess, but there’s no need to be that compulsively precise. I’ve since learned (see below) that professional bakers often like to control the amount of spreading by cutting back on the egg whites. Et voilà! Don’t be like me. Be like the pros. Use three whites per stick of butter, and tell anyone who asks that you departed from mathematical perfection on purpose.
Problem #2: The Order Of Addition
Here’s another case where I outsmarted myself by trying to be too precise. The typical “creaming method” approach says to (1) beat the butter until it is fluffy and white, (2) beat in the sugar and flavoring until smooth, (3) beat in the eggs one at a time until fully combined, and then (4) beat in the flour until just combined. The order matters for chemistry reasons. Several of the Cat Tongue recipes reverse #3 and #4, which got me all angsty. Was it a hidden trick? Or a typo?
After testing both I can tell you that it makes no difference. If you add the flour first (i.e., at step 3), you need to take extra care to avoid an eruption from the mixing bowl, but the advance warning should be enough. There is no real buildup of gluten to worry about. If you add the egg whites first, you never get them fully incorporated into the butter because there are just too many, but it will still come together nicely when the flour comes in later on, and you won’t need to deal with “are you sure this order is right?” question marks as you bake.
It’s a batter, my friends, not a dough. Very forgiving. Laugh at me so you won’t have to laugh at yourself, and then do whatever feels best. [But do remember to laugh. These are cookies, after all. They’re supposed to be fun.]
Problem #3: What “Extra” Flavors Work Best?
The answer turns out to be just as simple as those for the first two so-called problems: “Whatever suits your fancy of the moment so long as it’s only a hint.” That said, I should probably describe what happened during the testing in order to give you some context.
My first batch followed an online formula suggesting ¼ tsp. of vanilla for each egg white. Uhm, no. Or rather, NOOOOOO! That was at least triple the required amount, and it also hit us squarely in the [yawn] button. Plain and buttery, sure. Character free? No thank you.
The next experiments involved cinnamon and cardamom, two favorites, and those worked fine so long as I stuck to sharply limited amounts. You want only enough for tasters to know the “extra” flavor is there. You do not want to make extra-flavor Cat Tongues.
Hmm. That might be a little vague. Let me try this a different way. When our daughter tasted the final batch, she reacted by saying this:
“Darn it, these remind me of something but I just can’t think of what it is. Wait a sec… I know! They taste like the toasted pancake bits off at the side of the griddle. You know, those little spots and strings that happen when batter drips off your ladle by accident? Don’t tell anyone, but I love those.”
She nailed it, and I hereby promise to keep the admission in confidence. From now on, at least. I need to share it here because it explains one of the two main reasons why you want such a light hand with the flavorings. The primary Cat Tongue flavor needs to come from that crispy, toasted, butter-infused browning at the edges and the bottoms of each piece. Adding too much “extra” flavor hides that, and thereby subtracts more than it adds.
What’s the second reason? Read on.
The Inside Story Brought It All Together
Both Kate and I had grown a little frustrated by the time I got a few batches in. The cookies tasted nice enough, but they just didn’t deserve all the treasured memories we read about online. Sure, everyone loves toasted buttery goodness, but these weren’t all of that. I can make something even better with a standard butter or spritz cookie that won’t require fussing around with a piping bag. Same thing for the texture. Yes, they were delightfully crispy when fresh out of the oven, but they quickly toughened up and no amount of dunking could change it. If anything, we thought the cookies were downright dunk-resistant because all those egg whites seem to provide some insulation. Given a tray with an array of Cat Tongues alongside any of the butter cookie variations from Volume 1, the Cat Tongues would soon be lonely orphans.
I had to be missing something, so I took the most recent (cinnamon) batch out in search of a native tester. Where was I going wrong?
NOTE FROM KATE: I was really happy with this particular series of photos, until I noticed that the custard was frowning!
NOTE FROM KATE: But once I flipped the offending sliver of orange peel, the entire composition brightened the cheerful glow I knew was hiding there somewhere! (That’s what you get when you anthropomorphize custard…)
Fortunately enough, we have an old friend who is not only a native of France but also a professional baker of extraordinary skill. Jean-Marc does not share America’s obsession with cinnamon, but even he approved the light hint contained in the batch I brought over. Then he ventured a polite suggestion:
“It works, but I still miss the orange. We always made our Langues de Chat with orange zest so it would pair with the crème brûlée.”
I’m sorry, what? That off-hand comment led to a conversation that finally flipped on that proverbial, cartoon light bulb in my head. It comes down to a simple, basic realization:
Cat Tongues do not compete with butter cookies, because they are not a standalone cookie to begin with. They are designed and intended to be served as an accompaniment to custard desserts like Jean-Marc’s crème brûlée, crème caramel, ice cream, etc. The cookies use up extra egg whites; the custards use up extra yolks; and both sides get enhanced when they reunite with the cookie being used in place of a spoon.
Aha! Gotcha! My expectations needed a sideways shift. Cat Tongues wouldn’t be lonely orphans on that tray, because they wouldn’t be there alone. They’d be sticking up out of a crème brûlée like the ultimate edible spoon, and that, my friends, would not be the last survivor. Langues de Chat are a co-star, not a lead; an elegant and efficient way for fine dining establishments to transform another dessert from delicious treat into memorable experience; and thus they stand in a category all their own.
That makes sense. It explains the hype, the romantic memories, and even the dunk-resistant texture. It also explains why keeping isn’t an issue, especially since they are easy to refresh with a quick pop in the oven prior to serving. And it made me much more excited than I’d been before. These are truly a Heritage Cookie.
But wait, there’s more. Jean-Marc had another casual bombshell to drop. “If the spreading gets too bad you can always cut back on the egg whites.”
I’m sorry, what? “But I thought the whole thing starts from that 1:1:1:1 ratio.”
“It does,” he said. “But it’s still just the start. The recipe still works if you’re a little short on the whites, and sometimes we did it on purpose when they were coming out too thin.”
Damn but that man is good. Consider me a swine who appreciates the pearls. So much for adding a fourth egg white and then spooning off the extra. Please don’t tell him that I was crazy enough to do such a thing. Jean-Marc shakes his head at our lack of sanity every time he sees those Christmas Snowflake Cookies. No need to reinforce the suspicion, right?
The Final Problem: Time And Temperature
Do the research and you’ll see two different approaches to the baking time for Langues de Chat. Either 375° for ≈ 10 minutes, with strict instructions to spin the tray halfway through, or else ≈ 15 minutes at 350°, with cautions to think about spinning the trays if your oven has hot spots.
I tested both, and found that it really comes down to elusive differences in the amount and depth of the browning around the edges. 375° gives faster and deeper browning with a slightly better array of colors, but the window between “brown” and “burnt” can grow kind of tight. That is why spinning the trays becomes vital, and why you also need to stand around for occasional checks as the cooking time comes to a close. 350° takes a little longer and produces more of a uniform brown than the intriguing range of dark-to-tan, but it also requires less in the way of babysitting. The choice is entirely up to you. The distinctions are subtle at best.
Just be aware that time and temperature aren’t the only factors. This is one of those recipes where the color of your cookie sheet can make a real difference.
Over the years we have amassed a collection of five different sheets, which now range from two that have gone black with years of use, one that is now blued steel, one that is gold-toned, and one that is still pure silver. The dark ones bake this cookie almost 3 minutes faster (at both temperatures) than the lightest one. That is a very significant difference! Account for that factor with your own baking sheets as you set forth on this journey.
Two Final Cautions – They Really Do Spread That Much, And Thus Your Piping Skills Will Matter
The photos in this post show cookies that may be as wide as 2″ across (5 cm) at their broadest spots. Every one of them started with an even ½” (125 mm) bead from the piping tip. Do the math… No. Don’t bother. Let me summarize.
Cat Tongues spread way more than you’d ever believe, they do it to all directions, and they are magnetically attracted to each other in a demon-powered effort to meet, marry, and merge into a single, good for nothing mega-cookie.
Plan accordingly. Keep them well and truly separated. If you can only fit nine or ten on a cookie sheet, so be it. You are the cookie chaperone! Keep those little, grasping, would-be elopers well and truly apart. There is no such thing as a chaste little kiss. The tongues will lock and entwine.
The only thing that really helps is good, even piping. Cookie gremlins view bumps or bulges as an open dare to see if there’s enough material to race off in some unexpected direction. My daughter Lee gets full credit for these clean-looking specimens because she possesses those skills. She got the piping bag because I do not possess those skills. The gremlins have my number. There’s nothing I can do beyond striking back at the evil, cookie destroying imps here, on paper. Vengeance is mine! Bwah-ha-ha-ha…
Extra Spice From Kate: These cookies really explode to their full potential when paired with custard, ice cream, or even a good yogurt with a bit of honey. For crème brûlée, follow your favorite recipe. After a bit of fussing, I found that an even mix of white and brown sugar, broiled for one minute, worked best. As for the chocolate, it’s a matter of taste. Scott says he would love the chocolate accent with the “right” custard, but I find I prefer the crisp cookie plain. I compared store-bought meltaways with our usual semisweet chocolate amended by a bit of cocoa butter, and in this application they performed comparably.)
…You have been warned. Jean Marc said the wicked things feed on extra egg whites, so the reduced amount may help, but I’m telling you: there’s something supernatural behind all this. You’ve got to be ready for their tricks!
CONCLUSION
Cat Tongues a/k/a Langues de Chat are a special purpose cookie designed and intended to be a sort of edible spoon for custards such as crème brûlée or a luscious homemade ice cream. Nothing on earth can match them for that targeted role. They’re also easy if you have some basic competence with a piping bag. Or a competent and draftable daughter.
Keep the flavors subtle, and by all means pair them up to match the accompanying dessert. And remember that the browned edges and bottoms are what you’re really after. If you keep that goal in mind, and follow those simple guidelines, you’ll be more than happy with the results. There really is something elevated and elegant about serving Langues de Chat alongside their companion treat.
The classic, with versions for eating out of hand or for using in other recipes
Here’s another head smacker cookie really should have gone into Volume I but somehow escaped our notice. It came up now in a sideways fashion. We’ve finally gotten around to working on Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Treats. You know that cookie. Everyone does. It’s the one you loved as a child, with a simple cookie base that has marshmallow on top, and is then coated with a thin chocolate shell.
That cookie has scores and scores of different version around the world, but the most common uses some equivalent to a Nilla Wafer® base. So that meant I should start by making… Doh! I’ve never actually worked up a homemade version of Vanilla Wafers. [Sigh]
The result was all we could have hoped for and more. In fact, we discovered that it isn’t a single cookie. It’s actually three.
Use the full amount of flavor and you’ll get a very pleasant cookie to eat out of hand, that adults will enjoy as much as children.
Use a moderate amount of vanilla, and you’ll make something very close to the commercial product. Just better in every way. Real butter and real love make a real difference. Kate says that toddlers in Prague were fed a similar cookie whenever treats were earned.
Reduce the amount of flavor all the way, and you will get the plain, invisible cookie that’s perfect for all the “other” uses these get purchased for. Banana Pudding; El Cheapo Tiramisu; Chocolate Marshmallow Treats; etc., etc., on and on, and suchforth and suchlike.
This is a simple cookie, and it’s meant to be a simple cookie, so I’m going to try to keep the discussion brief. There weren’t many issues that needed to be addressed. It was really a matter of focusing on what we wanted the cookie to be.
First the Eggs
I wanted this to be a light, crispy cookie with a fair amount of air, that would taste a little buttery without coming off as rich. Most recipes in our books and online resources called for one whole egg to go with each stick of butter. I tested that, along with one egg white, and one egg yolk.
The whole egg won handily, both for ease and flavor. Yes, you can make a good cookie with both egg white and egg yolk, but the whole egg is simpler and, for this use, better.
Wait; Haven’t We Made This Before?
For crying out loud! Butter cookies. Sugar cookies. Shortbread. Alfajories. Spritz Cookies. Snaps. They’re all pretty much the same, right? Just butter, sugar, flour, starch, and egg in slightly different proportions, plus a hit of flavor. Was this one really different, or just a variation on one of our existing and already-tested recipes?
Well… no. I went back and crunched the numbers. These are in the same family but the proportions are distinct enough to earn their own name. Same for the classic French cookies we plan to work up someday, such as Langue du Chat (“Cat’s Tongues” a/k/a Homemade Milanos®), and Tuiles. Those use several egg whites to create a different species within the same genus.
What’s In A Name?
All that recipe comparison work did clarify one thing that was bugging me. These are not a “wafer”!
I am a lawyer in my real life, and have been for 30 years. So I can speak for my profession when I tell you that virtually every non-criminal problem I see comes down to a variation on the theme of frustrated expectations. Person X thought s/he deserved or would get an “A,” ended up with a “B”, and grew angry at that result. So Person X goes back to Person Y to complain, “where is my A?”, and the situation then grows worse because Person Y insists that s/he meant “B” all along. And most of the time both interpretations fit the actual words.
The solution? Define your bloody terms so you can at least know where you really disagree! Try it the next time someone wants to argue about politics. “Exactly what do you mean when you use that word?” You’ll be shocked at how much of your fight disappears, or at least settles down to the amicable question of how words ought to be used.
In any case, I have spent a lot of years getting frustrated over that stupidity, in both my profession and in politics, so I get a little [ahem] picky about calling things by their proper names. A “wafer” is an extremely thin, usually broad cookie like our different Snowflake variations, Tuilles, or Lace Cookies. You can get to that result in many different ways, but that’s the definition.
This cookie does not meet that definition, and thus it isn’t a “wafer.” This cookie is a “Snap”. Harrumph.
We define Snaps as any plain, simple, round cookie that features a clear and focused flavor. Cardamom, Anise, and Black Pepper Snaps feature a single spice. Ginger snaps feature a spice mix with a touch of molasses. But that is the family group, and that is where this cookie belongs. Harrumph I say again! And harrumph for good measure. Harrumph. Harrumph. Harrumph!
Alas, but the outside world does foolish things on occasion. Sometimes it will even [gasp!] ignore it when some large company mislabels what ought to be a Snap as a Wafer. And a wise man has to know his limits. So let us agree on a simple formula, okay?
First, I am in the right. Harrumph. And that means the world is wrong. And thus equity, justice, and fair play are unanimously on my side.
Next, I am not being petty no matter what certain females in my household may choose to imply. Nor childish. Not, not, not!
And no, this isn’t a fight I’m going to win. So how about a compromise?
Let’s agree to call the eating version of this cookie a Vanilla Snap. That’s the tasty one with a full tablespoon of vanilla, which is going to make people sit up and say, “I never thought I’d say it, but these things are capital-G Good.” The weaker versions, which are intended for use in other recipes anyway, can be called by that other name for the sake of allowing the rest of the world to save some face.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Confirmed Again: “Other” Starches Work Better Than Corn Starch
Is the cookie better with a bit of gluten-free starch to supplement the flour? Yes, it is. Cake flour might work too, but we didn’t test it.
Would corn starch work? Yes… but it isn’t as reliable as rice flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot, etc., because you’ll occasionally get a less-done piece that leaves a gummy sensation in your mouth. It’s an effect we wrote about in our book Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World. Corn starch breaks down at a higher temperature than those others, and thus cookies made with corn starch are more likely to have leftover “uncooked starch” in the final product. That’s the underlying problem; it was confirmed again in these experiments; and there’s simply no reason to fight the science. Vanilla Snaps cook until the bottoms brown, which gives a margin of error, but why make use of that margin if you don’t have to?
We usually bake with tapioca starch because it is cheap and readily available in large quantities at our local oriental market. We have tested rice flour and arrowroot too, and found them to be identical. We have read that potato starch fits in too. Corn starch is the only one that requires a higher baking temperature.
Would A Drop Cookie Work?
We always prefer to write up drop cookie recipes when possible, just because they’re so much easier for new people. Refrigerator slice-and-bakes come in second, followed by roll-and-cut cookies, and then by ones you pipe out. What was the best way to go for this one?
The answer depended on what we wanted to do with them. Drop cookies worked fine from the baking perspective, but I simply couldn’t get them to come out even enough to use as a consistent base for the other project. So here is my verdict:
If you’re after the eat-out-of-hand Vanilla Snap version, make a simple drop cookie and be done with it. You don’t need to do it that way, but you can. Kate swears that they also came out a little lighter and crispier than the rolled-and-cut version, though I couldn’t tell the difference.
If you’re after a cookie to use in some other role (like the base of a Chocolate Marshmallow Treat), roll them out and use a cookie cutter. These are dead consistent and thus better as an ingredient. The dough is a little on the sticky side, but works fine if you simply dust with flour as needed.
If you’re trying to jazz things up, add a bit of milk to thin the dough out to a batter, and then pipe out something fancy. You could even sprinkle it with a bit of sanding sugar. It ought to work with a spritz gun as well.
Bake Until The Bottoms Are Good And Tan
Part of the flavor in this cookie comes from actual browning on the bottom. Most cookies want to come out of the oven when they’re still pale, and the edges feel barely set. Leave these in for the full 12 minutes, or until you can see browning around the edges.
CONCLUSION
That’s about it. One forgets that plain old vanilla isn’t that plain at all. It’s a really delicious spice, and it fully deserves to be just as celebrated in a Snap Cookie of its very own. They are as “heritage” as you can get, and well worth making.
They say that only two groups of people give free samples away: drug dealers and fudge makers. It isn’t quite true. Our friend Jean-Marc Chatellier offers free samples of this ultimate butter cake at his famous bakery in the riverside township of Millvale, PA. But the logic is the same in all three cases: one taste and you’re hooked. The only difference is this: Breton Shortbread a/k/a Butter Cakes a/k/a Gateau Breton beats them all when served with a dollop of crème fraîche and a berry or two.
This recipe went in and out of Volume I for ages.
SCOTT: “It’s a cake, not a cookie.”
KATE: “So what? We cut it into bars half the time anyway.”
SCOTT: “No bar cookies!”
KATE: “But it’s too good to leave out.”
SCOTT: “Do it as a tassie?”
KATE: “I dunno… Isn’t that cheating?”
See what happens when you have two authors and both of them are of two minds? But now that we have a blog to fill, with that harvest tang in the air? Oh, heck yeah.
“Here my friend. Have a taste. One little taste can’t hurt you, can it?”
Honest to God, folks. You can build an entire bakery around this recipe. They are that good.
A few weeks ago we put up recipes for a set of Five macaroon recipes we’ve come to love – which could be described as marzipan suspended in an egg white meringue. And I am now working busily on a special Croatian treat called “Rafioli”, which is basically an exotically flavored almond paste wrapped inside a baked pasta shell. [Watch for it!]
German Mandelhörnchen and a Greek equivalent are also on our “to do” list after Kate took an initial whack that wasn’t too far from being right. Those amount to a flavored marzipan or almond paste lightened with fewer egg whites than you’d use for macaroons, formed into crescents, and then dipped in chocolate.
EXTRA SPICE FROM KATE: We have no photos of the Mandelhörnchenbecause a mysterious cookie gremlin raided our kitchen before anyone could add the chocolate part. Skeptical spouses have wondered if “doppelganger” would be a more accurate than “gremlin,” but I admit nothing. He only suggests such an outrageous thing because they are one of my all time favorites, both tasty and toothsome.
And then… Hmm, a pattern seems to have formed! There are dozens, if not hundreds of baked goods that start with a base of finely ground almonds, mixed with sugar and then bound by egg whites. That ingredient is called “Almond Paste” when left loose and a little sticky, or “Marzipan” when you add enough extra almonds to make it solid. We wouldn’t call either one a “cookie” all on its own. Commercial marzipan is actually marketed more like a not-so-sweet candy (with U.S. and English versions tending to be sweeter), and almond paste as an ingredient. But the basic concept gets used in so many true cookies, and cookie fillings, that it’s only fair to give our version.
Besides, Valentines Day is coming next month and you can earn some major brownie points by making Marzipan treats and forming them into something romantic. And double-besides, the recipe for Marzipan contains a couple of surprises that many people don’t know about, such as a tiny bit of rosewater used as everyone’s not-so-secret ingredient.
Anyway, here is our version for your education, edification, and delight.
This lovely photo of Marzipan Fruits at the Nuremberg Christmas Market is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share alike 2.0 Generic license at the linked website. Many thanks to the author for his or her generosity.
