St. Patrick’s Day has always been a very blah “holiday” in my opinion. For as much as I love the color green, it really makes no sense as a holiday that needs to be marked on calendars. As a kid, it was an excuse for the most annoying kids at school to pretend they have a right to pinch you. I wore green just to keep those weirdos away from me. As an adult, nobody cares about the green thing (thank goodness), but then it becomes an occasion for the worst adults you know to go out and drink a lot of Guinness. Which, fine, okay. But that’s not a holiday! That’s a day to drink.
The people who get into St. Patrick’s Day because they’re “Irish” just remind me of this SNL skit. Being an American who has Irish ancestry is not a personality trait! There’s 31 million of them in America right now!
Unless you are the family from the film Luck of the Irish, you are not allowed to make having Irish heritage your personality.
Anyways, despite all this ambivalence-bordering-on-dislike of St. Patrick’s Day, I found myself throwing these Lucky Charms Marshmallows into my basket at Target. I couldn’t help myself. They were asking to be baked into something. And the only other St. Patrick’s Day post I’ve ever done was 11 years ago.
I didn’t know what to do with them initially, but I eventually settled on these cookies. I wanted to sort of replicate the cereal-in-milk flavor pairing, but it’s kind of hard to bake and make the flavor… milk. So I decided to toast the milk powder (thinking it would be a bit like the cereal part of Lucky Charms as well), and then loading up the frosting with milk powder.
The toasted milk powder was intriguing to me, because of the hack that to make your brown butter… browner, you can add milk powder and that browns with the butter’s milk solids. So I didn’t know whether it would replicate a brown butter flavor. But it didn’t quite. It was certainly in the same vein, but it tasted a bit more caramelized. A bit like caramelized white chocolate. Which is a flavor I love, so I’m not complaining. It’s actually a great way to capture that flavor without having to add white chocolate.
I tried baking the marshmallows into the cookies to see what they would do (see above), and they were surprisingly unaffected by the oven. But I didn’t think they needed to be mixed in, mainly because they are already so breakable and I didn’t think they would withstand much folding of the dough. Anyways… the package was light, mainly because the marshmallows are so light, and there were a lot more in the package than I thought. So I may need to bake with them again. Stay tuned I guess.
I think putting lucky charms marshmallows on cookies is probably the most stereotypical you can get for St. Patrick’s Day. But you know what? I am not Irish, so I don’t particularly care. Also – I’m 5.6% Scottish. And where’s our holiday?
Also – it’s not even like St. Patrick’s Day perpetuates Irish stereotypes. I think it perpetuates Irish-American stereotypes. And I’m fine with that. I lean into American stereotypes whenever possible.
Later this year, I look forward to visiting my ancestral homeland of Finland. I can’t wait to go over there and tell everyone I meet that I am 0.9% Finnish. Maybe they’ll give me the same welcome as Irish Americans get in Ireland.
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Toasted milk cookies, milk powder-enhanced buttercream, and Lucky Charms marshmallows
Ingredients
For the Toasted Milk Powder Sugar Cookies:
- 1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 1 tbsp glucose
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/4 cups flour
- 2/3 cups milk powder, toasted
- 1 tsp cream of tartar
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp kosher salt
For the Milk Frosting:
- 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1.5 to 2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
- 1⁄8 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup milk powder, UN-toasted
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
Instructions
Make the sugar cookies:
- First, toast your milk powder. Preheat the oven to 280 degrees F.
- Spread the milk powder on a parchment-paper-lined oven tray in a flat layer.
- Place in the oven for around 45 min – 1 hour, removing it to stir it every 8-10 minutes so it bakes evenly. Toast it until it is deeply golden and caramelized, and take it out before 45 minutes if you think it’s done (mine only took about 25 minutes – it depends how thinly you spread it and how much you’re toasting). You can take it further in the caramelization, but don’t go too far, or it will become bitter.
- Let it cool completely before setting it aside to cool while you prep the rest of the dough.
- Combine the butter, sugar and glucose in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2-3 minutes. Scrape down the sides, add in the egg and vanilla and beat for 7-8 minutes.
- Reduce mixer speed to low and add in the flour, milk powder, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together – no longer than 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- Using a ~2 tbsp measure portion out the dough onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet – you should get 12-14 balls of dough. Pat the tops of the cookie balls flat – wrap the sheet pan tightly in plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour or up to 1 week. Do not bake the cookies from room temp – they will not bake properly!
- Heat the oven to 350°F. Arrange the chilled dough at least 4 inches apart on the baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes – the cookies will puff, crackle and spread. The cookies should look lightly browned on the edges (golden brown on the bottom) – the centers will show just the beginning signs of color. If they haven’t reached that color yet, leave them in a for an extra minute or two. Cool the cookies completely on the sheet pans before frosting.
Make the frosting:
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until soft, about 1 minute.
- Add 1.5 cups of confectioners’ sugar, milk powder, salt, and vanilla. Beat on low speed until the sugar is well incorporated.
- Add another 1/2 cup sugar and the cream. Add remaining 2 cups of sugar as needed to thicken the frosting. Beat on medium speed until the frosting is smooth and fluffy, about 4 minutes.
- Frost cookies generously. Top with the rest of the Lucky Charms marshmallows.