Cookies!

[darkemeralds]

There's the serious stuff in life, and then there's inventing cookies.

I'm trying to invent bite-sized chocolate-filled shortbread pillows. (Why? Because I bought this silicone mold and I wanted to use it for something.) I think I'll call them "coussins ganâchés" because yes, I can totally invent French words.

I've tried sealing ground-up milk chocolate inside the dough, but it got a little burnt in baking. Then I tried Scharffen-Berger chocolate-hazelnut ganache. It held up much better to the heat, but my dough was too thin for it.




I was trying for scale here, and whoops. Failboat. That's an espresso cup and a teeny-tiny demitasse spoon, and the "coussins ganâchés (hee!) are only about an inch and a half square.

It's not like these are inedible or anything, but the goal is crisp, golden shortbread squares with the total surprise of a chocolate filling.


So...things I'll do differently next time: slightly thicker dough, slightly less filling (yes, there IS such a thing as too much chocolate). Find a way to seal them more neatly. Bake them a little longer. Make my own ganache (Scharffen-Berger's tastes of alcohol even after baking).


Round three will be whenever I recover from the chocolate OD and get the urge again.

Comments

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

Not that I have any real idea but for crispiness, perhaps you need to bake the shortbread separately, then fill and seal the lid on with something like a very stiff icing sugar wash? (Or perhaps that's what you're doing already?)

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

I could make little shells separately and dollop some of the ganache into them--but then they'd just be mini chocolate tarts, kind of, and my Big Idea here is "total enclosure." I was afraid of burning the chocolate, so I underbaked the cookie-dough. I've since learned that ganache can stand up to quite a bit of heat, so the shortbread part can be made crisper.

Trial number three continues tonight.