ROCKY ROAD COOKIES - with homemade marshmallows
Notes:
These rocky road cookies are a piece of Americana, consisting of chewy brownie cookies with homemade vegetarian marshmallows and almonds. Damn, these are good. The cookie itself is so rich and the flavor is enhanced by high quality, freeze-dried coffee crystals, but you could also use espresso grounds. And the vegetarian marshmallows are made with egg whites and agar agar (instead of gelatin) and retain all the fluff and flavor of regular marshmallows.
Rocky road ice cream was introduced as a flavor in early 1929 by William Dreyer, of Dreyer’s ice cream fame and was supposedly inspired by a chocolate confection made by his candy maker business partner, Joseph Edy, that included marshmallows and walnuts (later replaced by almonds). It’s said that Dreyer named the flavor “Rocky Road” after the Wall Street crash of 1929 to “give folks something to smile about” during the great depression.
I weighed the ingredients for this one so weighing them will produce results that more closely resemble mine, but I don’t think you can screw this one up too easily :).
Rocky road cookies with homemade vegetarian marshmallows
Equipment:
Stand mixer preferable (or if not available a hand electric mixer)
Baking sheets
Mixing bowls
Sauce pan
Kitchen scale (optional).
Silicone baking mats (optional)
Prep time: 25-30 mins, Baking time: 10-12 mins, Total time: 35-42 mins
Ingredients:
Finely chopped semisweet or dark chocolate (preferably with cacao content 60-70%): 3/4 cup (113 grams)
Unsweetened cocoa powder: 1/2 cup (42 grams)
Instant coffee crystals (or espresso powder): 1 tsp
unsalted butter: 1/2 cup (1 stick or 113 grams)
Eggs, room temp: 2 large
Granulated sugar: 1/2 cup (75 g)
Dark brown sugar: 1/2 packed cup (90 grams)
Salt (I used pink Himalayan): 1/2 tsp
Vanilla extract: 1 tsp
AP flour: 3/4 cup (90 grams)
Marshmallows: ~7 campfire sized (like these marshmallows), or even better, make the vegetarian marshmallows using my recipe
Almonds: 1/3 cup (55 g)
Directions:
Heat oven to 350 F (180 C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
Add chocolate, cocoa powder and espresso powder in a small mixing bowl.
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat until bubbly but not browned, about 2 mins, then pour over the chocolate mixture. Without stirring, let the mixture sit so the residual heat can melt the chocolate while you whip the eggs and sugar.
Add the eggs, dark and granulated sugar, and salt in your stand mixer bowl fitted with a whisk attachment. Whisk on medium-high speed until the mixture is creamy and and the sugars have begun to dissolve, 3 to 5 minutes.
Stir the chocolate mixture until shiny and smooth. If any lumps of chocolate remain, you can microwave the mixture in 10-second bursts then mix and check until everything is melted; if needed this should only take a couple of bursts.
With the mixer on low speed, add the vanilla extract and then the chocolate mixture. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to make sure the chocolate is evenly distributed, then add the flour and mix on low speed until only a few streaks of flour remain. Use a spatual to fold in the final streaks of flour. The dough should be glossy and resemble brownie batter.
Using a 1.5 inch cookie scoop, scoop a leveled amount of the dough (use a spatula to level off) into mounds directly onto the parchment-lined baking sheets, with each portion at least 2 inches apart, yielding about 12 cookies. I found that I could get 14 if I thoroughly scraped all the dough out of the bowl.
If you make marshmallows (marshmallow recipe here), then cut each marshmallow into 4 pieces and place 2 pieces down in the middle of each cookie. If you buy large marshmallows cut 6-7 marshmallows into either halves or 4 pieces and place down one halve per cookie (or again 2 pieces per cookie). Surround the marshmallows with 4-5 almonds.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, rotating pans half-way through. Cool for a couple minutes directly on the baking sheets before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
*If you make the vegetarian marshmallows you may find that they don’t disperse like commercial marshmallows without some encouragement. So right after baking poke them down and they will flatten and spread a bit (rest assured they are very soft and melty on the inside and in my opinion taste better too).
Adding the melted chocolate coffee mixture to the creamed eggs and sugar