Tag: milkbar

Summer in a cookie

I meant to make these last summer.

However in that lesson of detail that I seem to learn over and over again, I learned that dried corn and dehydrated/freeze-dried corn are definitely NOT the same thing.

And then I got distracted by something shiny and what are decidedly summer cookies (in my head at least) didn’t seem appropriate when I remembered again in winter.  Luckily, I’d bookmarked this wonderful creation of Christina Tosi’s and, when reorganizing cookbooks, found it again.  In the introduction to the recipe in her book, Milk Momofuko Milk Bar, Ms Tosi explains that she hoarded this recipe for years.

And I totally understand why.  Go ahead and leave your political viewpoints about corn at the door on this one and just give in to the simple deliciousness.

Because I can’t ever seem to leave well-enough alone and my stalking  research on Ms Tosi suggests she’d support some tweaks, I adapted these cheery cookies ever so slightly by adding lemon zest and dried blueberries.  I also scaled them down quite a bit.

They’re soft, chewy and slight crispy  and remind me of sunny summer afternoons after a day spent at the beach or pool.  I think they’d be even more delicious with a scoop of blueberry ice cream or Milkbar’s own sweet corn cereal milk ice cream sandwiched in between a couple.

Corn Cookies

adapted from Christina Tosi, Milk Momofuko Milk Bar

Ingredients

Makes about 2 dozen smaller or 1 dozen large cookies

Note–I use the weight not volume measurements for this recipe.

  • 16 TBS, 2 sticks, 225g room temp butter
  • 1 1/2 C, 300 g granulated sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/3 C, 225 g flour
  • 1/4 C, 45 g corn flour
  • 2/3 C, 65 g freeze-dried corn powder (I found freeze dried corn on Amazon but later saw it at Bristol Farms and used a coffee grinder to make the powder)
  • 3/4 tsp, 3 g baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp, 1.5 g baking soda
  • 1 1/2 tsp, 6 g kosher salt
  • zest from large lemon (or 2 small)
  • 1/2-1 C dried blueberries (depending on taste)

Directions

  1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, corn flour, corn powder, baking powder, soda and salt.  Set aside.
  2. Cream together butter and sugar using the paddle attachment of a standing mixer or an electric mixer on high for 3 minutes.
  3. Scrape-down the sides of the bowl, add the egg and beat for 7-8 minutes.
  4. Reduced the mixer speed to low and add the zest.  Then add the flour mixture, combining until the dough just comes together (no more than a minute).  Fold in the dried blueberries by hand.
  5. For smaller cookies, use about a one ounce scoop (the original recipe calls for a 2  3/4 ounce scoop) and scoop dough out, placing on to a cookies sheet lined with parchment.  Leave a couple inches between each dough mound.
  6. Either pat, or use the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar to flatten-out the dough.  Wrap tightly and cool in fridge for a minimum of  an hour, but up to a week.
  7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  8. Arrange chilled dough on parchment-lined baking sheets (they’ll need more room between them then when you put them in the fridge).  Leave 2 inches in between each.
  9. Bake for 18 minutes.  Cookies will puff, crackles and spread.  Done cookies will be faintly browned on the edges but bright yellow in the middle.
  10. Cool completely on sheets before transferring to a plate, storage container or your mouth.

Snickerdoodles on steroids

True to the namesake of her bakery, Christina Tosi of Milkbar has a particular affinity for things cereal and cracker related.  Her cookbook contains several recipes for a category of concoctions she calls “the crunch.” Operationally defined, crunches are a an array of recipe add-ins whose primary ingredient is most often derived from snack foods including cereals, crackers, chips and pretzels.

Among these little nuggets of nirvana I discovered a formula for homemade cinnamon toast crunch, crunch.  Well, she had me at the first crunch.

The technique involves browning butter in the microwave.  ‘Go ahead she says, it’s easier than stovetop.’  Apparently not for my microwave.  Oh, I got brown butter.  I also got an appliance covered in a layer of butter so thick you could grease toast with it for years.  But, maybe your microwave is better behaved.

The next ingredient is white bread.  I can’t tell you how odd it was to walk down the bead aisle looking for plain white bread.  We don’t eat a lot of bread in our household.  Whenever I buy a loaf I have to keep it in the fridge because left in the pantry, it’ll go moldy before we even get halfway through.  Of course, the mold may have something to do with the fact that I buy fairly gross good-for-you grown up bread that doesn’t have a lot of preservatives.  So buying white bread was a bit of a wonder (uhm…see what I did there…wonder…bread).

Off with the crusts and into 1/2 inch pieces.

A gentle toss with the brown butter and a cinnamon sugar mix and it’s time to get toasty.

Out of the oven, this stuff is ridiculous.  Seriously…crunchy and buttery and cinnamony.

But wait.  Remember the mother snickerdoodle recipe from last week?  Well, Christina does encourage the reader to experiment.  So, what do you think might happen if we chopped up the cinnamon toast crunch crunch into smaller bits.

Then carefully folded them in to the snickerdoodle dough and rolled each ball of dough in cinnamon and sugar before baking?

You get a snickerdoodle on steroids my friends.

You know you want to make these.

If you like this, you might enjoy these

Brown butter chocolate chip cookies

Big sky buns

Soundtrack

Lumineers.  What?  Everyone else is.

Snickerdoodles on Steroids

Adapted from Milk, Christina Tosi

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Crunch

Ingredients

  • 1/4 (100 g) white sandwich bread
  • 1/3 C (115g) brown butter (instructions below), just warm
  • 1/2 C (100g) sugar
  • 1/2 tsp (2g) kosher salt
  • 1 tsp (2g) ground cinnamon

Directions

  1. To brown butter.  Place 1/2 C unsalted butter in a microwave-safe dish.  Cover with a microwave-safe saucer and microwave on high for 3-5 minutes. The butter will melt and then start to pop.  If you are the TMH’s microwave, it’ll then explode leaving you with about 1/3 of a cup of browned butter.  Set butter aside to cool.
  2. Heat oven to 325 degrees.
  3. Tear or cube the bread into 1/2 inch pieces.  Put it in a bowl, douse with the brown butter and let soak for about a minute.
  4. Add the sugar, salt and cinnamon to the mix and toss well.  Spread the mixture on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes.
  5. Pull from oven and break-up with a spatula.  Bake an additional 5 minutes.
  6. Cool the cinnamon toast crunch crunch completely.  Chop into crumbs a little bigger than orzo.

For Cookies

  • Snickerdoodle dough
  • 1/2 recipe cinnamon toast crunch crunch
  • 1 C sugar combined with 1 tsp cinnamon
  1. Go here for the base snickerdoodle recipe and follow directions but swap-in 1/2 of the cinnamon toast crunch recipe for the birthday cake crumbs.
  2. When scooping dough, roll each ball in the cinnamon sugar mixture, set on parchment lined baking sheets and flatten a bit with the bottom of a cup (about 3″ diameter).
  3. Follow the remaining instructions for the sprinkle cookies.