Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies

It’s Sunday. And my last day of funemployment. Bring on the Sunday Scaries. I also don’t have any real idea of what time it is. It is 7:45 or 8:45 or 6:45. Did I fall back or forward? Clearly Mother Nature was cracked out of her mind this morning as well, because do you know what she dropped on Bostonians who were up and out of the house early this morning taking advantage of the extra hour? My LEAST favorite four letter word. S-N-O-W. It’s too soon. It was 70 degrees 4 days ago! What the mother? So there I am thinking I am just crushing Sunday morning, made it to 8am mass and went to Target. Where I was in search of ingredients for cookies and all things travel-sized. And I go to get in my car, and bam. Low-tire pressure light. I drove it around the South Bay parking lot (danger, danger Will Robinson) in hopes that it was just due to the cold and would go off, but it didn’t. And while I might fake being handy at home, when it comes to cars I am the least resourceful person you’ll ever meet. So after I assume I have a heroin needle or something of that sort from the parking lot stuck in my tire, I drive to Braintree to get the tires checked out, because with my luck my tire would be flat tomorrow morning on my way to my first day of my new job.

So there I am on 93 South and IT IS SNOWING LIKE A MOTHER. I’m talking giant flakes, and I’m already having an irrational anxiety attack about how my tires are going to explode on the highway because of the low-tire pressure light. And I am sitting at Sullivan Tire waiting for them to look at my car, and the technician who looked eerily similar to Snoop D-O-double-G, came out and asked me the dumbest question ever “Lady, did you try to put air in your tires? because the pressure is fine.” So I just simply looked back at him, and said “Excuse me, but do I look like I know how to put air in my tires?” So about 45 minutes later I see my car speeding around a curve and into the parking lot. And Snoop comes back out to say he reset the sensors and took it for a test drive (Ricky Bobby test drive? jebus, Someone was going a little fast). So the diagnosis was: It is cold outside. Sometimes that trips the sensor up. Go home Burberry. Thanks snoop-a-loop. Have a gin and juice on me.

Despite all the drama of the morning, I did manage to pick up some cookie ingredients at Target – Cornflakes, mini chocolate chips, and mini marshmallows. After my trip to NYC last weekend, I cannot stop thinking about the cornflake crunch on the Momofuku Milk Bar’s soft serve ice cream. It was just like buttery, sweet, crunchy deliciousness. So I did some searching around the interweb for a recipe for the cornflake crunch, which I found. And then even better, I found these cookies from the Milk Bar cookbook which incorporates the cornflake crunch. Tah-dah! So I made them. And ate a lot of mini marshmallows in the process. A good cure for a crummy morning. Also, the bloody mary that Colleen and I had at brunch helped too. Vodka and mini marshmallows. The solution to, and cause of, all of life’s problems. Amiright?

Ingredients:

Cornflake Crunch Ingredients

• 5 cups cornflakes
• 1/2 cup milk powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• 9 tablespoons melted butter

Cookie Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips
• 1 1/4 cups mini marshmallows
• 3 cups Cornflake Crunch

Step 1: To make the cornflake crunch, preheat the oven to 275 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a sil-pat. Put the cornflakes in a medium bowl. Use your hands (and annoyance at Mother Nature) to crush to about a quarter of their original size. Add the milk powder, sugar, and salt and toss to combine. Add the melted butter and toss to form small clusters.

Step 2: Spread the cornflake mixture in an even layer on the parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake at 275 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the clusters are toasted and smell buttery. Remove from the oven and let it cool completely. You should probably taste test to make sure it’s as delicious as it smells. I stuck it in the fridge to expedite the cooling process. 

Step 3: To make the cookies, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cream together the butter and sugars. Add in the egg and vanilla and beat until fluffy. Scrape down the side of the bowl before adding in the dry ingredients.

Step 4: Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add to the wet batter and mix on a low-speed until the dough comes together.

Step 5: Add in the chocolate chips and cornflake crunch and mix on a low speed just until combined. Add the mini marshmallows and mix until just incorporated.

Step 6: Now this is an important step. Normally I’d say just skip it, but you really need to do it. Using the medium-size cookie scoop, place even-size balls of dough on a parchment or sil-pat lined baking sheet. I did 8 cookies per sheet, because these will spread, you need to make sure there is sufficient space in between each cookie. Press the top of the cookie lightly to flatten it a bit. Wrap the baking sheet with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour. If you bake the cookies at room temperature they will not hold their shape.

Step 7: Bake at 375 degrees for about 12-15 minutes. You need to watch the cookies in the last few minutes and once they just start to turn golden brown, take them out of the oven and let them sit on the cookie sheet to cool and set before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Every time I go to take a picture with cookies and milk, I am reminded that I only own wine glasses. And I fill them with heavy cream. Mmm.

Now the pictures I post, make all of my cookies look perfect (obviously). But half of them came out a little more spread out than I’d like, but that’s a common risk when baking with marshmallows. It’s about the taste, not the looks. Remember that people. These cookies are very sweet. The corn flake adds a nice crunch, similar to when I used rice krispies in my oatmeal cookies. 

The cornflake crunch on top of the cereal milk softserve at Milk Bar was just so unreal. I am going to try to see if I can incorporate this into some other recipes soon. Maybe cornflake crunch on top of corn muffins? Yeah Yeah? (I’m nudging you with my elbow and raising my eyebrow while saying that).

So this is it. Funemployment is over. Back to the real world tomorrow. And not like a fluffy let’s take it easy for the first few weeks while you adjust back into Corporate America and have to put real pants on every morning. Oh no. It’s much more drop you right back into the real world and you better start swimming fast, because you have 6 flights to 4 cities in the next two weeks. #pointspointspoints I spent an hour this afternoon trying to re-perfect my ability to effectively pack a carry-on suitcase. My new TUMI carry-on to be specific. Because corporate america ballers need a solid suitcase to play the part. While I’m consulting in the cloud. Which is actually my new job. Because when you tell people that they stop asking questions, because we all know, no one understands the cloud. Synergy. My old coworkers will be happy tomorrow because I need to go park in my old garage at work for my first day at my new job (which is a half block away from my old job), so I’ve arranged for one of my drug (cookie) runners to pick up tonight’s batch of cornflake cookies at 8:30 am. The return of cookie monday, black market edition.

I think I packed in as much as I could over the past week and a half, saw a lot of people, shopped till I dropped, ate all of the carbs, tried to make up for it with some hardcore gym time (resulting in me now having Trex arms which I can barely move), and spent the past two days watching 18 episodes of Gilmore Girls on Netflix. On Wednesday my friend Sara came over with her adorable baby Avery, for some early morning baking. We made some Reese’s Pieces cookies from Sally’s Bake Blog and then baked Apple Cider Donuts.

This is Sara. She brought me into Sapient almost four years ago, and now we are both part of the Sapient Alumni crew.

And of course we had a very good taste tester to give us her opinion after her first bite of donut. Avery-approved!

So by the time Thursday rolled around, I started getting a little panicked that I had spent most of my funemployment being go-go-go nonstop, seeing people, doing things, checking things off my to-do list – all good things, but my sweatpants, couch, and Netflix account were calling my name because I had been neglecting them. So I started watching Gilmore Girls. And I only stopped to go to the gym, and play in a pitiful tennis match yesterday (because of my Trex arms). Which meant I got through Season 1. I forgot how good of a show this was. I was on the same life trajectory as Rory when I used to watch this after school with my mom in high school. When Rory was applying to colleges, so was I. And then we both went to school in Boston. So I do feel like I got in some solid relaxation this weekend, which was good. And despite a crazy morning, I had a relaxing brunch with Colleen today and got myself organized for a week of travel. I’m going with red and black theme with my outfit tomorrow for my first day. (you know, to stay with the Les Mis theme that I like to live my life by).

And on that note, I plan to walk into the Hancock Tower tomorrow morning dressed in my black suit and red blouse singing “Let us welcome it gladly with courage and cheer, Let us take to the streets with no doubt in our hearts.”

No? Too strong? Should I go with “Do you hear the People Sing?” Or just maybe table the whole Les Mis thing until I’ve been there a few weeks?Okay, well wish me luck either way. First day at a new job always feels like the first day of school. Except this first day involves an afternoon flight to Atlanta followed by a flight to Philly later in the week. I haven’t told my new coworkers yet about my cookie baking skillz. I figure that’s a good piece of leverage to keep in my back pocket for when I need to win some people over.

When the beating your heart echoes the beating of the drums there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes …. (come on, you knew that was coming right?)