I told you it's an obsession. I made those two Momofuku Milk Bar cakes and now I'm sharing some mini Blueberry and Cream Cookies, also from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook. The recipe for the full-size cookies is right online on the Momofuku Milk Bar website, so I won't retype it here, but I do want to take you through the cookie-making process, in case you find it a little intimidating. (I swear it's not intimidating at all!)
Unlike the cakes I made, which had multiple components, the cookies just have two components: milk crumb and cookie dough.
You'll want to make the milk crumb first, since it will need to cool and set before being mixed into the cookie dough. The milk crumb is a simple mixture of milk powder, flour, cornstarch, sugar, and kosher salt bound with a little melted butter. You don't even need a mixer for it. You just combine everything with a spatula. As you mix, you'll see little clusters forming. That's when you know it's time to bake the crumb.
After the crumb spends 20 minutes in a low oven, as Christina Tosi says, "Your kitchen should smell like buttery heaven," and you'll want to take the crumb out and let it cool.
The other crumbs I made (birthday cake crumb and chocolate crumb) were done at this point, but the milk crumb requires just a little more. You have to toss the cooled crumb with more milk powder and then stir melted white chocolate into it. Here's the hardest part: Every 5 minutes, you have to give the crumb a little stir until the white chocolate hardens and the clusters lose their stickiness. That's not even hard, right?
With your milk crumb ready to go, you can make the cookie dough. Most cookie doughs start with creaming butter and sugar in a mixer and this one does too, but one more thing goes in at this time: glucose. Glucose is pretty difficult to work with. It's really sticky! I've learned to weigh the accompanying ingredients first and then, using my cookie scoop and working quickly, spoon the glucose on top to weigh it out. (This makes it easy to slide it right into the mixer bowl.)
Once the butter, sugars, and glucose are creamed, you add the eggs and keep mixing.
Add your milk crumb and then your dried blueberries on low speed, and the cookie dough is done. So easy.
Then you need to portion out the dough. I scoop the dough using a small OXO cookie scoop because I like to get lots of mini cookies. For this part, you don't have to worry about spacing out the dough balls because you'll need to chill the dough before baking. (I refrigerated some to bake the next day and froze the rest to bake in the future.) After scooping, lightly press on the dough balls to flatten them. Then wrap your sheet pans tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate or freeze the dough balls. (If freezing, once the dough balls are frozen, you can pile them all in a zipper-lock bag for long-term storage.)
When the dough balls are good and chilled (at least 1 hour in the fridge), space them evenly on a Silpat-lined baking sheet (about 15 per sheet if you make minis).
Then you bake them. (For mini cookies, you'll bake them at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and the middles look set. I found that the timing was the same whether I baked them from the fridge or freezer.)
After the cookies cool briefly,
I was worried that the dried blueberries might not impart enough blueberry flavor, but these were honestly more packed with blueberry flavor than baked goods I've made with fresh blueberries.
Have I convinced you that you need this cookbook yet? Or at least that you need to make these cookies?!
This post contains an Amazon affiliate link to a cookbook I love. If you follow the link to purchase the cookbook or make other purchases, I'll earn a few cents.