Cadbury Cream Eggs reimagined as COOKIES

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I recently saw a Pin for homemade Cadbury Cream Eggs that had me tempted to give it a try. The photo looked so cute; the process looked so interesting. The only thing that stopped me cold was the fact that I HATE gooey cream candies.  I don’t like the texture; I don’t like the way it oozes around my mouth. Yes, I know I’m weird, but the aversion has something to do with a childhood incident where my older brother convinced me that my half eaten box of chocolate covered cherries actually contained chocolate covered tadpoles. Gotta love those older brothers…

So instead of homemade Cadbury Cream Eggs, I wondered if I could make the eggs out of cookies??? I could make a yellow “yolk” cookie center, a white cookie layer, and a chocolate shell. Sounds good to me. Here is the end result. I call them: Mock Cadbury Cream Egg Cookies…

Be honest, how do they look?  Would you have thought, "that looks like an egg" if I hadn't put the suggestion in your head?

The first step on this cookie adventure was deciding what kind of cookie recipe to use: sugar cookie, spritz cookie, sand tarts, sandies? I needed a cookie that would hold it shape during baking; something that wouldn’t spread. I finally decided on a Mexican Wedding Cookie recipe (aka Sand Tarts) minus the chopped pecans.

I quickly mixed up a batch of the dough, but it looked a little strange without the pecans to help bind the mix.  It came out pretty sticky - almost paste-like, but I just added a little more flour and kept on going. Next I tinted about 1/3+ cup of the dough using Wilton’s Buttercup Yellow food gel, and I got this bright, almost neon concoctions.  Looks like baby food doesn't it?

The rest of the dough didn’t looked “white” enough to represent the white of the egg, so I tried using some of Americolor’s Bright White gel. I used about 25 drops and while the dough looked a little paler, it wasn’t really white.

Next I made little balls from the yellow dough (about 3/4 teaspoon each) and froze them. Freezing the yellow balls keeps them from getting smooched out of shape as you pack the white dough around it.

I flattened about 1 Tablespoon of the white dough into an oval shape, and then wrapped it around a frozen ball of yellow dough.

Make sure to squish the white dough firmly against the frozen yellow ball to remove any air pockets. All the air pockets must be removed or the surface of the cookie will collapse during baking.

As a final step, mold the white dough into an egg shape where one end is rounder and fatter than the other end.  Now the baking. Because I used a Mexican Wedding Cookie recipe, I baked the cookies slow and low. 45 minutes at 270 degrees F.    Here they are just out of the oven, and notice that on some (most) of the cookies I didn't get all the air pockets out, so the white part of the cookie kind of collapsed around the yellow part.  Bummer.

After they are completely cool, I dipped them in chocolate ganache. (My ganache was a little too thick, so I did more “frosting” then “dipping”.)

And finally, a little bit of piped on decorations.

So how do you thing they turn out?  I think they kind-of, sort-of look like a cookie version of a Cadbury Cream Egg, but what do you think?

Happy Baking,
Carol

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Mock Cadbury Cream Egg Cookies 
(yield 15 cookies)

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup Powdered Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2-1/3 cups All Purpose Flour

Dark Chocolate Ganache

Directions:

1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together, add the vanilla and mix until incorporated.
2. Slowly add the flour to the butter mixture and mix until incorporated.
3. Remove about 1/3 cup of the dough and tint a bright yellow color.  Using about 1 teaspoon of dough form 15 small yellow balls.  Place in freezer until they are firm to the touch.
4. With the remaining dough, flatten about 1 tablespoon of dough into a flat disk shape.
5. Place one frozen ball of yellow dough in the center of the disk, and then fold the white dough up and around the yellow ball.  Squeeze and roll the white dough firmly around the frozen yellow ball to make sure there are no air pockets.  Mold the dough into a egg shape.  
6. Place the formed cookies on an un-greased, parchment lined cookie sheet.
7. Bake in a preheated oven for 45 minutes at 270 degrees F until the bottom are just turning brown.
8. Allow the cookies to cool completely before dipping them in chocolate ganache.
9. Decorate as desired.

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Mallows

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.

In Nicole's words, "I'm a huge fan of Gale Gand, I have tried a lot of her recipes and they are such a huge success. For July's challenge though I wanted to try something different and I wanted to do Gand’s version on my favorite store bought cookies which are the Peppridge Farm Milano Cookies and the Mallows (Chocolate covered Cookies). I've been wanting to try this recipe but just haven't have the chance to do so or to be honest haven’t have the courage to tackle homemade marshmallow yet, until now."

So Nicole threw down the gauntlet and challenged all the Daring Bakers to make marshmallows. Hummm. I'm not a big marshmallow fan, but what the hay. Mallows it would be.

The cookie part of the mallow was a snap. Other Daring Bakers had cautioned that the recipe made a ton of cookies, so I cut the recipe down to a third.


Next came the marshmallows. Yikes, what a sticky mess! I had marshmallow cream in my hair, under my nails, stuck to my elbow, nose and cheek. Good thing no one was around to take pictures of me.



As with the cookies, other Daring Bakers had forewarned the procrastinators about marshmallow mixing pitfalls, so I beat the marshmallow mix like forever. Here it is after 15 minutes.


In the end I mixed it too long (you think) because the marshmallows firmed up almost immediately and I had a hard time piping. I tried a variety of piped shapes including the traditional, spirals, and bunnies (got the idea from Martha Stewart).


Here is one of the marshmallow bunnies going into the chocolate bath. Swim little fella, swim.


Some Daring Bakers also reported that the chocolate thinned with oil took too long to set, so they suggested using solid shortening instead. I used the shortening and my chocolate set very quickly, but it got all spotty. I don't know if the problem was my chocolate (Nestle) or my technique (melting in a microwave). I guess my chocolate wasn't tempered properly, but the taste testers didn't seem to mind.

So here are the finished Mallows. The traditional:


The Mallow Bunny (my favorite):



The Spiral: With the spiral I was trying for a lollipop look (a la Bakerella), but they just didn't look right. When I covered them in chocolate they resembled mounds of dog poo on a stick! I didn't want to gross anyone out, so I just sprinkled the spirals with colored sugar instead. ( I have pictures of the "poo" if you want to see...)



The Peek-A-Boo Mallow. At this point I was running out of chocolate so I just spooned a blob of chocolate on the top instead of dipping the entire cookie.



So that is it for the July 2009 Daring Baker Challenge. I can't wait to see what we get to bake in August.