blueberry, white chocolate & pistachio cookies

There are a lot of mediocre cookies in the world. I'm thinking particularly of chocolate chip style cookies - there are a lot of ways to go wrong. I am not a fan of cakey cookies, that don't spread enough and stay high and puffy in the middle. I don't them totally crispy either, they should be thin, just crisp on the outside, but should definitely have chewy, nearly underdone middles. 

These ones, from cookie genius Dorrie Greenspan, really meet all my cookie requirements. They are thin and spready and have wonderfully wrinkly tops. They stay chewy in the middle and have perfectly crisp edges. You can go traditional and use chocolate chips and maybe some walnuts. Or you can try white chocolate, pistachios and blueberries like I did here. Both ways are great. 

You can use dried blueberries if you can't find the freeze dried ones, just don't use fresh or frozen, they'll make the cookies goopy. Freeze dried fruit is kind of hard to find, but you can order it online or check a camping supply store. Feel free to substitute another freeze dried fruit or dried fruit. I think raspberries would be great in these too. 

blueberry, white chocolate & pistachio cookies

adapted from Dorie Greenspan

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp salt

• 3/4 tsp baking soda

• 1 cup butter, at room temperature

• 1 cup sugar

• 2/3 cup brown sugar

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 2 large eggs

• 2/3 cup white chocolate, chopped

• 1/2 cup pistachios, toasted and chopped

• 1/2 cup dried or freeze dried blueberries

Preheat oven to 375° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Beat butter in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer, until smooth and fluffy. Add sugars and continue to beat until well combined. Add vanilla, and eggs one at a time, mixing well between after each. On low speed, add in flour mixture, mixing until just combined. Stir in chocolate, pistachios and blueberries with a spatula.

Scoop 2 tbs mounds of dough onto baking sheets. They will spread a lot, leave 2 inches between cookies. Bake around 10 minutes, turning sheet halfway through baking.  

Cornflake marshmallow chocolate chip cookies

These cookies feel slightly transgressive to me. There is something really satisfying about baking from scratch and then stuffing the baked goods with industrially processed junk food like marshmallows. Maybe I'll follow this one up with a pie made of pop tarts. 

When I first made these cookies I followed the Milk Bar recipe but I couldn't get them to turn out quite right. They were still really good, just not exactly what I wanted. I wanted the cookies to be slightly flattened but not too thin, chewy in the middle with crispy edges and I wanted there to be some discernible chewy marshmallow goo. What I got was thin very spready cookies, crispy throughout with caramelized crunchy marshmallow edges. They were almost florentine-like. 

These were delicious and no cookies went to waste. But I couldn't achieve the chewiness I wanted. I tried under baking them, I tried baking the dough chilled, baking room temperature dough. I fiddled with the oven temperature. Everything I tried produced cookies that were thinner and crispier than I wanted. So I took the whole idea of the cookie, with the marshmallows, cornflakes and chocolate chips, and I stuck it in a different dough altogether. I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, which makes softer, thicker cookies.

I still under baked them, because this cookie dough can turn out a little more cakey than I like. Reduced baking time will also help you achieve perfect results with the marshmallows. It is very important to preserve some marshmallow that is melted and chewy but not fully caramelized and brown. These cookies had really deeply caramelized molten marshmallow pools around them and but they also still had white goopy marshmallow on top. The marshmallow exists in two distinct states simultaneously, the superposition of marshmallow. It is allowed to fulfill all of its best possible destinies at once, in one cookie.

cornflake crunch:

adapted from Milk Bar

• 5 cups (6 ounces) cornflakes 

• 1/2 cup milk powder

• 1/4 cup sugar

• 1 teaspoon salt*

• 1/2 cup melted butter

Crunch the cornflakes with your hands into small cornflake rubble. Add milk powder, sugar and salt and toss. Drizzle melted butter over and toss to coat the mix with butter and form small clumps. Spread over a cookie sheet and bake at 275° F until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

cornflake marshmallow chocolate chip cookies: 

adapted from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

• 2 cups flour

• 1 teaspoon salt*

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar

• 2 large eggs

• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips 

• 1 1/2 cups cornflake crunch 

• 1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows

Combine the flour, salt, and baking soda together in a large bowl.

Beat the butter and sugars in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until smooth and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, scraping the bowl in between.  Add vanilla and beat until just incorporated. 

Add the flour mixture 1/2 cupful time and beat after each addition. Fold in cornflakes, marshmallows and chocolate chips. Scoop the dough using a medium size cookie scoop or hand form medium sized cookie dough balls. Chill dough balls in the fridge for at least 1 hr, up to overnight if you like. 

Bake at 375° F until there are crispy melted pools of marshmallow around the edges and still white marshmallow goo on top. I started checking them after 6 minutes and kept checking every minute or two after that. In my oven they took about 8-10 minutes.

Salt note: I generally use measurements for Diamond Crystal salt. If you are using Mortons or another brand, adjust accordingly - this chart can be helpful.

Photos by Tyrel Hiebert