Homemade Marshmallows in Salted Toasted Rocky Road Ice Cream
My journey to rocky road ice cream began on a (yes another) rainy and dreary spring weekend when I was trying to come up with a new cookie to send to my marshmallow-loving sister for her birthday. I’d recently fell in love with making meringue (and wielding my kitchen torch), plus s’mores cookies seem to be having a moment. In the past I’ve made a copycat version of a local bakery’s s’mores cookie that has a whole graham cracker baked along the bottom of a chocolate chip cookie and topped with a marshmallow, but I wanted something different. I turned to my copy of 100 Cookies (#90 to be exact), to see what Sarah Kieffer would do. Turns out that she rolls balls of chocolate chip cookie dough in crushed graham crackers mixed with sugar and melted butter. Then she suggests turning to page 284 and making homemade marshmallows for the tops – and toasting them. Decision made. I was making these cookies. And left with too many marshmallows, I naturally had to make rocky road ice cream. It’s a bit of a “when you give a mouse a cookie” conundrum. Anyhow, all good paths lead to ice cream. While the jury may be out on the s’mores cookies, the marshmallows were definitely superior to mass-manufactured, and the case is closed when it comes to Salted Toasted Rocky Road Ice Cream.
Baking all the Christmas Cookies
Family and friends aside, Christmas isn’t Christmas without the decorating, gift buying/wrapping and cookie baking. I’m happy to say that my decorating and most of my shopping were done the first week of December. So while I waited for the supply chain to deliver (or “find” in the case of Fed Ex) my goods, I sorted through many a cookie recipe to distill my 2021 baking selection and make my list of ingredients in preparation for the Brandt family cookie party (aka fiasco or chaos depending on your perspective). A houseful of loud, apron-clad women (and a few men) gathered at one of my sister’s houses last weekend. A medley of Christmas carols, holiday movies and KitchenAid mixers competing in the background made for a crazy-fun day in the kitchen. We made and sampled Salted Chocolate Gingerbread Men, Lemon Sables, Peanut Butter Cup Cookies, Salted Chocolate Chunk Shortbread, Glazed Ginger Cookies and the obligatory Frosted Sugar Cookies.
Peanut-Butter Brownie Cookies from 100 Cookies
Move over pumpkin, the neighborhood kids want peanut butter and chocolate for Halloween. A recent article in USA Today shares data from CandyStore.com that says America’s favorite overall Halloween candy is Reese’s Peanut Buter Cups. What’s not clear is if all the Reese’s variations are included in this count. In case you haven’t noticed, Hershey’s couldn’t stop at peanut butter cups (available in mini, regular and king size). Anyone who’s ever seen the E.T. movie has a soft spot for Reese’s Pieces. Today, you can lure E.T. with peanut butter cups stuffed with Reese’s Pieces, pretzels, potato chips, and even crunchy cookie bits. I was always partial to the Nutrageous bar, which is hard to find in stores. All this to say that I’ve been craving some peanut butter and chocolate and so turned to my 100 Cookies book. There it was on page 45, Sarah Kieffer’s #9 cookie called Brownie-Cookie with the option of dolloping a spoonful of peanut butter on top before baking. I was hooked. All I needed now was some more peanut butter in my chocolate. I added Reese’s Pieces, M&M’s Peanut Butter candies and some googly eyes. And a fine Halloween cookie was born.