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

Since May, I've had a poster over my desk at work with COOKIES scrawled in Sharpie at the top, followed by a list of names and check marks. When I needed a favor this spring, my default promise was "I'll bake you cookies." At least one person said "I'll hold you to that." In July, I made good, embarking on Christmas in July Cookiefest 2009.

The pros and cons of Christmas in July Cookiefest 2009, of which the pros are the obvious winners:

Pro: Cookie debts paid, in spades.
The big lesson: if you tell people you are baking them cookies, they expect chocolate chip, perhaps oatmeal, maybe slightly burnt. They do not expect these. Thanks, Daring Bakers!

Con: A weekend gone.
If I had made chocolate chip cookies, it would have taken two hours. The Mallow cookies were three-step cookies and the Milanos were two-step cookies. (Plus, for good measure/super-masochism, I also made Oreos, another two-stepper.) But let's be honest: a weekend in the kitchen, particulary when Scheidt is not here to entertain me, is really no punishment.

Pro: I got to make homemade marshmallows.
I generally think store-bought marshmallows taste stale and chemical-ly, and I avoid them. This challenge gave me a reason to try homemade marshmallows: if I liked them, great. If not, I was planning to give 90% of the cookies away anyhow. The verdict: these cookies are AWESOME. They were my favorite of the two, and scored well on the effort-to-deliciousness ratio test even though they were three-steppers.

Pro: I got to buy stuff.
A thing I'm starting to dig about Daring Bakers is that it provides a clean and easy excuse for me to buy a new piece of kitchen equipment each month. Last month, I got to buy a kitchen scale. This month, I got a pastry bag, and I'm glad I did: this would have been pretty much impossible without it. The pastry bag was used both for squirting marshmallow onto cinnamon shortbreads and for piping out the Milano cookies.


Con: You should really research how to use that pastry bag before you fill it 7/8 full.
I had runny Milano batter all the way up my arms due to my cavalier behavior. After a shower, I found this great video which shows you how to load up a pastry bag and not get messy. As noted by several other Daring Bakers, the batter for these was really runny and did not hold a shape, so my cookies did not end up perfectly oval like Milanos from a package. I'm sure Pepperidge Farm uses some kind of mold to shape the cookies. Note to self: Google first, pastry second.

Pro: This Milano recipe uses a bunch of egg whites.
This is a major pro if you make as much ice cream as I do.

Pro: Milano recipe left me with a good 1/2 cup of orange-chocolate ganache to eat by itself.
'Nuf said.