Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies

I am neither brave nor bold enough to make just a chocolate chip cookie. Everyone’s mom or grandma makes “the best” chocolate chip cookie. And every one of those chocolate chip cookie recipes is different. So, out of respect, we dared not compete. Instead, we made a delicious chocolate chip tribute cookie—one of our most popular cookies—by accident.

In the Ko basement one day, Mar overtoasted the cornflake crunch for the cereal milk panna cotta. She was pissed. I was pissed. But we refused to let it go to waste. I was already well versed in making a cookie out of anything left in the pantry, and we needed a dessert for family meal anyway. So we made cookies with the cornflake crunch, and we threw in some mini chocolate chips, just to make them appealing to the cooks in case the overtoasted cornflakes were a bust, and some mini marshmallows, because we were eating them as a snack, and why the hell not. It was just family meal.

The cooks freaked. They requested the cookies for family meal every day after that. And so the cornflake-chocolate-chip-marshmallow cookie was born—love at first bite and a shoo-in on Milk Bar’s opening menu.

Holiday Cookie variation: We’re awfully fond of celebrating the holidays with annoying decorative knickknacks. Or, rather, my mother loves to buy annoying decorative knickknacks and send them to us, and we love to make it look like a holiday just threw up in our kitchen. We like our cookies to celebrate the holidays too—that’s how we came up with our winter “holiday” cookie, a cornflake-marshmallow cookie with crushed candy canes in it.

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Ingredients

• 16 tablespoons (2 sticks)/225 g butter, at room temperature

• 1 1/4 cups/ 250 g granulated sugar

• 2/3 cup/ 150 g tightly packed light brown sugar

• 1 egg

• 1/2 teaspoon/ 2 g vanilla extract

• 1 1/2 cups/ 240 g flour

• 1/2 teaspoon/ 2 g baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon/ 1.5 g baking soda

• 1 1/2 teaspoons/ 5 g kosher salt

• (3 cups)/3/4 recipe Cornflake Crunch

• 2/3 cup/ 125 g mini chocolate chips

• 1 1/4 cups/ 65 g mini marshmallows 

Holiday variation:

• 40 peppermints or 18 candy canes/ 200 g peppermints or candy canes

Instructions

1. Combine the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the egg and vanilla, and beat for 7 to 8 minutes. 

2. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute. (Do not walk away from the machine during this step, or you will risk overmixing the dough.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.

3. Still on low speed, paddle in the cornflake crunch and mini chocolate chips just until they’re incorporated, no more than 30 to 45 seconds. Paddle in the mini marshmallows just until incorporated.

4. Using a 2-ounce ice cream scoop (or a 1/3-cup measure), portion out the dough onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Pat the tops of the cookie dough domes flat. Wrap the sheet pan tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 1 week. Do not bake your cookies from room temperature—they will not hold their shape.

5. Heat the oven to 375°F.

6. Arrange the chilled dough a minimum of 4 inches apart on parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pans. Bake for 18 minutes. The cookies will puff, crackle, and spread. At the 18-minute mark, the cookies should be browned on the edges and just beginning to brown toward the center. Leave them in the oven for an additional minute or so if they aren’t and they still seem pale and doughy on the surface.

7. Cool the cookies completely on the sheet pans before transferring to a plate or to an airtight container for storage. At room temperature, the cookies will keep fresh for 5 days; in the freezer, they will keep for 1 month.

For the holiday variation:

1. Unwrap the candy and transfer it to a medium zip-top plastic bag. With the end of a rolling pin, break the candy up into medium to small pieces, at least one quarter in size, no smaller than a Nerd, being careful not to make candy powder. Follow the recipe for cornflake-chocolate-chip-marshmallow cookies, adding the candy pieces with the mini marshmallows.