Momofuku Milk Bar’s Corn Cookies

 

Watching the Mind of a Chef,  in episode #14 of season one, Christina Tosi makes corn cookies, and as soon as I saw this I knew I had to make them! Corn Cookies!!! I wanted to dance around my kitchen, and I hadn’t even made them yet. I like all things corn! I put corn in my pancakes, my scrambled eggs, I love corn chowder, popcorn, creamed corn, even corn dogs, though I don’t think I’ve had one in many years, and wouldn’t go out of my way for one, especially because they are usually made with lousy hot dogs, but if someone starts making them with Nathan’s or Sabrett dogs, let me know! (Hmmm, maybe I will take this on in another post.) But I digress. Corn cookies is what we’re talking about.

Assembling the ingredients proved a bit of a challenge. It also included me exchanging some Tweets with Momofuku Milk Bar, and they were very helpful! Oddly, the ingredient I had trouble locating was corn flour. Not Masa (which also calls itself corn flour, but isn’t) not corn meal, not polenta, not cornstarch (though in Great Britain they call that cornflour)… Nope I needed corn flour. After going to both Whole Foods Market, and Essene (a small local health food store) I gave in, and ordered it from Amazon. I had to buy a case (four-one pound bags*) for the 1/4 cup of flour called for in the recipe.  I probably could have used semolina flour (which I have in my house) but I wanted to follow the recipe exactly. 

Because I am not a baker I generally follow recipes for baked goods just as they are written. This recipe was written really well, including listing the ingredients both by volume and in grams, and I weighed everything carefully. The one deviation I made was my scoop; the scoop I have was too small, about half the size of the recommended scoop, so I ended up with twice as many cookies, and baked them for less time. In hindsight, I could have used my small scoop and pressed two dough balls together… Having made them once I will surely make them again, they’re just so good. They will likely make it into my Christmas cookie repertoire.

Once I had assembled all my ingredients I got to work, and got the cookie dough made in a very short time, BUT, the cookies had to chill for at least an hour before going into the oven, and it was already almost 10:00 p.m. so I scooped them, trayed them, and wrapped them up to bake in the morning. My daughter was keeping me company while I made the dough, and without even baking them, the kitchen was filled with the sweet aroma of corn. She (of course) got to lick the paddle, spatula, and bowl, and we both declared these cookies amazing, even in their raw state.

Early in the morning I padded downstairs in my jammies to turn on the oven. Within a few minutes of putting them in the oven we were again overtaken with the lovely aroma of sweet corn. Imagine the scent of cornbread baking and multiply that by four or five, and you’ll get an idea of just how lovely these smell. We could hardly wait until they came out of the oven! 

They were so good, they had the crisp, rough exterior of a shortbread, but the interior was a chewy, corny wonder. Oh! I wanted to eat them all right then and there. My daughter requested that I make the third pan a bit less crispy and more chewy, so I baked those a little less time. She shared them with her friends, and they loved them too. They reminded me of something, but I am still searching the stacks of my memory bank for what precisely that is. They definitely taste like corn, they are sweet, but not too sweet, and a tiny bit salty. I can’t think of anything I would do to improve them.

Up until I found these my favorite cookie was a salted, white-chocolate oatmeal cookie from Smitten Kitchen, but those may have to make some room for these corn cookies! What is your favorite cookie recipe?

*If you would like to purchase a bag of Bob’s Red Mill Organic Corn Flour, so you can make these cookies, please contact me!