Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

I like trying my hand at doing iconic foods from scratch.  Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It, is an excellent guide for doing so.   Marshmallows make an appearance, along with graham crackers, toaster pastries, and chocolate sandwich cookies (oreos).

The cookie part is a crumbly chocolate cookie batter, rolled out and cut with cookie cutters.  The white icing is a simple mix of confectioner's sugar, corn syrup (we used honey instead), and evaporated milk.  Sandwiched together they look much like an oreo.

If you bite into one expecting an oreo, you will be disappointed.  The cookies are the crisp wafers you might expect, they're too thick and soft.  (Much of which is my fault, they should've been rolled thinner).  The other major faux pas was substituting honey for corn syrup.  I thought the honey might add flavor and intrigue, but it merely overpowers. 

That said, our sandwich cookies are good, maybe excellent, if only judged on their own merit without consideration for their iconic relative. 

Crust, Jam, and a Little Nostalgia

 I think the picture pretty much speaks for itself.

We made homemade pop tarts. These were adult pop tarts, with a homemade cranberry jam filling; a little tang to counterbalance the sweet.  The recipe came from a great cookbook, Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It.  It's one we use often.  The pastry dough was some of the best I've ever had: flaky, flavorful, and tender.  We're going to try it as a pie crust.

But really, the pop tarts were super fun, especially for those of us who weren't allowed to eat them on a regular basis as a child.  They got a lot of laughs, great conversation piece.

Campfire Food: Revisited

My new favorite cookbook is Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It. For anyone who enjoys making things from scratch, this is for you. Plus it is playful--with homemade recipes for oreos (called chocolate sandwich cookies) and pop tarts (called toaster pastries)--a way for adults to relive their childhood in a higher quality and slightly more sophisticated version. What could be better?

I chose s'mores: with homemade graham crackers and marshmallows. The graham crackers we made with graham flour, which is regular wheat flour just ground differently: the endosperm is finely ground while the bran and germ are coarsely ground, then all are mixed back together. The crackers were fairly easy to make, no complicated techniques necessary. It's just a basic one-bowl mixture. The most challenging part, of course, is rolling them out evenly and thinly.

Though these graham crackers were not as thin as Nabisco's I think I prefer my thicker, more flavorful version. And these crackers, combined with our homemade marshmallow (cut in rectangles perfectly sized to the cracker) were heavenly. The marshmallow had wonderful texture smoother and less Styrofoam-like than the jet-puffed version. They also didn't burn in the flame, instead the browned and caramelized enough to actually melt the extra dark Hershey's chocolate. Yum. Who says s'mores are just for kids?