The Background Story: A couple of moths ago, I came across an article on Refinery29 about gourmet and organic foods available at Target. Since I go to Target several times each month and I like gourmet and organic foods, my interest was piqued. I clicked through the slideshow (ugh, slideshows!) until I saw this:
Cookie Mix!
What? New York’s famous Milk Bar has a cookie mix? And it has cereal and marshmallows and chocolate chips? And it’s available at Target? For $4.99? Oh, heck yes!
The next morning, I waited patiently as a nice Target employee unlocked the doors to the store at 8 AM. I smiled, said good morning, and then did a bit of speed-walking to the baking aisle only to find a big empty shelf where these cookies were supposed to be. Seriously? Actually, I had to return to the store at least five times over the course of the next month until, finally, I found a single, solitary box. But by then I decided to attempt (and complete) the Whole30 Challenge — and cookies were a no-no. So the box sat on my shelf for a month. Until yesterday, when baking finally commenced!
The Unboxing: The box for the Milk Bar’s cornflake-chocolate-chip-marshmallow cookie mix contains two plastic bags. The first contains sugared corn flakes. The second contains the actual cookie mix (with flour, sugar, chocolate chips, marshmallows). The only other supplies necessary are one stick of butter and one egg. Not bad!
The Baking: The instructions say to toast the cornflakes first at 300 degrees for about 10 minutes. Which is fine, because it gives one time to combine the mix with the butter and egg. And that’s the point where I kind of messed up a little.
The corn flakes are getting toasty!
The recipe calls for “softened (but not completely melted)” butter. I had taken a stick out 30 minutes earlier, but it wasn’t close to being softened, so I popped it in the microwave. It looked good, but as it sat there as I was getting out my bowls and spoons and checking on the corn flakes, it proceeded to get a little melty. I didn’t think this would be that big of a deal, but…
…once everything was mixed together and the cornflakes were incorporated, I put the first batch of six cookies into the oven. Almost immediately the edges of the cookies began to get a little runny and then, after only six minutes (of the suggested 10 – 12 minutes of cooking time), I noticed the edges beginning to brown at an alarming rate. My darned melty butter!
Regardless, after ten minutes, they were done.
The finished product. They don’t look too bad, but the edges and bottoms were definitely a little burnt.
The Results: So how were they? Well, the taste was excellent — despite being slightly burnt. I was really surprised how much the marshmallow flavor really stood out. It was a welcome addition to what would have otherwise been a fairly standard chocolate chip cookie. I say this because the corn flakes didn’t really do much for me. In fact, their texture left a lot to be desired! The cereal portion of the cookie was actually chewy instead of crispy! And yes, I know — this may have been caused by my incorrectly softened butter, but next time I’ll toast them longer than the suggested ten minutes — just in case!
It should be noted that I have never had the original version of this cookie from Milk Bar in New York, but now I really want to go there. I’d love to find out how these stack up to the original!
The Link: If you would like to try this mix, you can order it online from Target for $4.99.
The Rating: Milk Bar’s cornflake-chocolate-chip-marshmallow cookie mix gets a rating of 4 out of 5.
The Guy Who Tries to Cook 