Is This Brownie Marshmallow Sandwich As Good As It Looks?

Chemistry meets comfort food in this ambitious cookie treat.

My friends Matt and AJ are on a cookie journey these days — as in, they’re making cookies at a feverish pace and pawning them off to unsuspecting but supremely grateful people nearly every day, if not every hour. They’ve recently pounced on Cookies: The New Classics for their recipes, a book I purchased a few years ago and pledged to someday deep dive. I never quite got to that deep dive; although, I’ve made a healthy (or rather, “healthy”) number of the recipes by author Jesse Szewczyk. Some standouts include cornbread madeleines, spiced honey rum balls, and the utterly unexpected sesame-scallion shortbread squares.

But there’s been one recipe that has always caught my eye — dare I say, HAUNTED me. Brownie sandwich cookies with blood orange marshmallow crème. The recipe’s photo — a shiny spoon spreading pink-hued marshmallow fluff over a brownie — is incredibly intriguing, but always seemed unattainable. Was I really going to make brownies AND marshmallow crème AND sandwich them together?

It took three years, but the answer, of course, was yes. Caught up by Matt and AJ’s cookie mania, I decided it was time for me to tackle the white (or perhaps pink) whale of The New Classics. Was it worth it though?

The photo in question.

Most cookies are relatively simple endeavors: mix some stuff together, bake, and enjoy. There may be a refrigeration interlude or perhaps a frosting coda, but generally, cookies are breezy larks. This one, however, promised to be a journey.

First I needed to make the brownie cookies, which would serve as the sandwich bread to this quasi-moon pie. Then I would have to make the marshmallows - a process that called for, among other things, a candy thermometer. There’s always a certain amount of peril that surrounds a candy thermometer (scaldingly hot temperatures, etc); so embarking on this exploit required an inner reserve of grit. Marshmallows, it turns out, are one of the great tests of personal bravery.

And so I began. The brownie cookies (or “brookies,” as some call them) were a breeze. I melted chocolate and butter in the microwave and then added some vanilla extract. In the meantime, a few eggs and sugar (white and brown, natch) went into the stand mixer and were whipped into oblivion — or at least until they fluffed up and became ribbony. At this point the chocolate and the eggs joined forces, and then finally we worked in your standard mix of dry ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda.

Once combined, I portioned out the dough onto cookie sheets and sent them off to theoven for a breezy 13 minutes. What emerged were lofty, craggy cookies that looked good enough to eat sans marshmallow. But we didn’t come this far to just eat some brookies. There was more work to do.

With a quick bang on the counter, I knocked the air out of the cookies and let them deflate from mounds to disks as we moved onto part 2 of the saga: marshmallows.

Just as a reminder, this was no ordinary marshmallow crème. This was blood orange marshmallow crème, which meant that I needed to squeeze 1 cup’s worth of juice from the ruby-colored citrus. No prob! I had 5 ripe blood oranges at my disposal, not to mention some very effective apparatuses to render every last drop of goodness out of them.

Ten minutes later and after much wringing, I had only managed to elicit 1/2 a cup of juice from my blood oranges. Horrifying! And also, a problem. I momentarily considered abandoning the marshmallows, but I knew I had to see this through. I raced off to the supermarket in hopes of finding more blood oranges.

Bad news: blood orange season had drawn to an end, and now there were no more to be had. I knew I could forge forward with regular oranges, but that was so much less fun. Beggars can’t be choosers though; so with head hung low, I returned home with a few cara caras and finished the juicing step somberly. The marshmallows were proving to be a nuisance, and I hadn’t even finished the prep.

With the orange juice sorted, I poured 1/3 of a cup into the stand mixer and added some gelatin. This process is called “blooming,” and in no time, the mixture had become firm-ish like a bloody quince paste.

The remaining orange juice went into a saucepan fitted with the aforementioned candy thermometer. I also mixed in corn syrup, white sugar, salt, and vanilla extract. Once all was incorporated, I went into hands-off mode: there would be no touching as a medium flame brought everything to a boil, and then a scary boil, and then an even scarier boil.

I mean, there was no real danger, but as those bubbles become stiffer and the chemistry started to kick in, I got all these weird Final Destination visions of some freak accident happening wherein the saucepan flipped over and scalding, melted sugar burned my face off. Other than that, melting the sugar was a pretty chill experience.

Once this menacing concoction reached 245 degrees, I had to immediately pour it into the stand mixer bowl with the bloomed gelatin and mix, starting slowly to avoid splatter and eventually gliding up to full speed. This went on for about 11 minutes. It was a wildly fascinating experience, especially once the threat of molten sugar violently flying out of the bowl abated.

For the first 4 or 5 minutes, the solution just looked like juice sloshing around in circles. At some point I cleaned my cutting board for, like, 30 seconds, and when I peeked back into the mixer, the solution was suddenly pale pink - like a creamy borsht - and fluffy too (perhaps less like a borsht). Clearly there’s a tipping point where the cooling sugar starts to form around all the air being whipped into it. Pretty neat.

Over the course of the next 5 or 6 minutes, the marshmallow crème continued to grow. It was no longer scary. Now it was utterly fascinating. A true science experiment. This was way more fun than it was supposed to be.

Once the crème had doubled in size and had become shiny and sticky, it was time to create the sandwiches. At this point, Matt and AJ as well as our friends Judy and Neil had come over after a night of crafting (this is what we do in middle-age, apparently); so all hands were on deck for this process. I used a cookie scoop to dollop the crème onto the cookies and then the group helped sandwich them together. We were then meant to wait two hours for the marshmallow to set up, but we were incredibly impatient. We dug in immediately.

The blood orange marshmallow was a surprise. I had expected something akin to an orange Milano cookie, but the flavor registered more floral and fruity than I had anticipated. A friend who tried the cookie another day mistook the flavor for berry.

We all really enjoyed the marshmallow crème, and many spoons attacked what remained in the mixer. There was actually so much left over that I feared I had been too stingy with it. This was compounded by the fact that in many of the cookies, a cross section revealed only a thin layer of marshmallow innards. (For the record, I added the prescribed amount of marshmallow to each cookie sandwich. I think the marshmallow just somehow deflated or oozed out).

For me, this is where the problems crept into the concoction. The marshmallow is clearly the star here, and yet somehow, the brownie cookies still dominated each bite. Part of the problem is that I may not have portioned enough marshmallow to each sandwich. But the larger concern is that the brownies may be just too much for this type of experience. Brownies are dense and intense, and when enlisted for moon pie duty, you’re essentially eating two brownies at once, which is wild. I get that these are technically “brookies,” not brownies, but I think there’s no denying the brownie aspects here.

And so this is my way of saying that if you’re thinking about going down a similar path with this recipe or a likeminded one, I would either use a classic moon pie cookie for the exterior or I would simply eschew the entire sandwich structure and just top a brownie with a big ol’ spoonful of marshmallow.

I leave this recipe with mixed emotions. I was disappointed with the final output, but I also had an incredible amount of fun with the process. For as chaotic was my marshmallow adventure felt, it was actually very easy (and would have been even easier had I not had citrus drama). I want to play around with homemade marshmallow crème more and maybe combine this recipe with different cookies for a more successful combination.

Until then, back to simple cookies and more humble ambitions. And thankfully, Cookies: The New Basics has many more options to try.

Have you made homemade marshmallows or marshmallow crème? What have your experiences been? And what about moon pies? Which type are your favorite?