The end of July sneaked up on me like a ninja, what with studying for a final exam and just being busy in general.  We were supposed to post this a week ago… But as they say, better late than never, especially where cookies are concerned, am I right?  Hopefully this post will still “count” and I won’t be booted off the DB blogroll for being a procrastinator!

The July 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole of Sweet Tooth.  She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

I’m not the hugest marshmallow fan, but the Milan cookies just seemed a tad bit boring/ unchallenging, and Daring Bakers is all about stretching yourself to try new things, so I opted for the Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies.  It occurred to me that I could make them a little more exciting by trying to make them taste like s’mores, so I substituted graham flour for half of the regular flour in an attempt to make the cookie part taste like a graham cracker.  (It sort of worked, but I think if I tried it again I would use an actual graham cracker recipe; I think it needed brown sugar or something else in there to give it that “graham cracker” flavor.)  For my marshmallows, I used golden syrup instead of light corn syrup because that’s what I had on hand.  It resulted in the happy accident of my marshmallows tasting like burnt sugar, giving them more of a toasted-marshmallow flavor which fit in perfectly with the s’mores thing I was going for.  Nice!

My marshmallow didn’t fluff up as much as it should have, and was a little runny, but other than that, the assembly went pretty smoothly.  I wasn’t sure if I had enough chocolate, so I just dipped the tops, which was actually a LOT easier in terms of messiness, and I think there was still a more than adequate chocolate-to-cookie ratio.

Now I just have to find a way to get rid of these… any takers?  I’m taking some to the zoo today to give to my niece & nephew, but I still have a few dozen in the fridge and there’s no way I’m going to eat them all myself!  Please apply within…

P.S.  I couldn’t resist updating this with a couple snapshots of the kids enjoying their cookies! Joey ate the top off his first, while Aleyna went for a more “direct” approach.