Moon Pie

Make the cookies.

In a food processor, pulse to combine both types of flour, the brown sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Add the butter and pulse to a coarse meal. In a separate bowl, whisk together the honey, milk and 2 tablespoons vanilla extract. Pulse to make a sticky dough. Remove from bowl, separate into two disks, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.

The next day… My dough was very sticky, so I just rolled it out on my Silpat Mat, and made the round cookie cutter cuts right on the mat. I used a 2 1/2 inch diameter round cookie cutter.

Bake the cookies (I just moved the mat with the whole slab of cutouts right onto a pan) for 12 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Remove from the oven and allow the whole slab to sit for about 3 minutes. Then, use your round cookie cutter to re-cut the circles.

Use a spatula to remove the cookie circles from the Silpat. Cool on a wire rack for a good hour.

This process leaves a lot of cooked cookie scraps. They’ll go fast. Trust me!

Meanwhile, make the marshmallow filling.

This recipe makes a lot of filling. I suppose you can halve the recipe. I turned the remaining filling into actual marshmallows. Please click on my blog link for instructions about this.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, use a fork to whisk together 1/2 cup of cold water and the gelatin. Set aside.

Add the 12 ounces sugar, remaining 1/2 cup of cold water, corn syrup, and 1/4 teaspoon salt to a small saucepan. Do not stir. Cover, and cook over a medium high heat for 3 minutes. Uncover and reduce heat to medium. Insert a candy thermometer. Bring the mixture to 240 degrees F; the softball stage. This will take 10-12 minutes.

Begin whisking the gelatin mixture with your mixer on low. Slowly stream in the hot sugar mixture. When you have added all of the sugar syrup mixture, turn the mixer on high and let ‘er rip for about 10 minutes. Add the 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Continue to whisk for another minute or two.

Transfer about a third of the mixture to a gallon sized baggie. Try to get it into a corner of the bag. Snip the corner, and pipe the filling onto the bottom of half of the cookie rounds.

Cover the filling with the remaining cookie rounds, to make a sandwich. At this point, I allowed the filled cookies to set up for about an hour.

Meanwhile, clean up a little, and make the chocolate coating.

Place the chocolate chips and vegetable oil in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high for 1 minute. Stir. Continue to microwave in 30 second increments until the chocolate is melted and well combined with the oil. Stir between each 30 second heat burst.

Place the wire rack of cookies on top of a rimmed baking sheet. Clear a space in your freezer to accommodate this baking sheet.

Use a ladle to drench the tops of the filled cookies in melted chocolate. Oh my!

Place the top-half-covered cookies in the freezer for about 10 minutes to harden up.

Remove the cookies from the freezer. They seem to stick to the rack, so use a fork to flip them over, and repeat the process and coat the other side with the chocolate. Place in the freezer for another 10 minutes to allow this side of chocolate to harden. You will have excess chocolate on the baking sheet I scraped it up with a spatula, put it in a bowl, and used it to dip the homemade marshmallows in. Again, see my blog link for instructions on how to turn the leftover marshmallow filling into marshmallows. It’s very simple. Sticky, but simple.

Store these cookies in the fridge. Enjoy!