Smepic Cookies

The chocolate marshmallow cookies from the Cookie Cutter in the Vancouver Mall have been haunting me since around age 8. Did you ever have one? A warm thick chocolate base with a generous smear of marshmallow topped with a fudgey frosting. Oh my goodness. That was a cookie.

All good things must come to an end and the Cookie Cutter closed down... 15 years ago? Ever since I've kept that cookie in my heart. A few times I've tried to track down a similar recipe online and discovered that I wasn't the only one on the hunt. No luck.

Instead, last week I decided to do my best to make my own version of the classic deliciousness. I'm not too proud to share that my first attempt was an absolute fail. Completely. I used this recipe from 101 Cookbooks and fiddled with it too much by replacing the eggs. Check it out:

My next attempt I was much more logical and used a recipe that started out vegan from the Post Punk Kitchen. I actually made this recipe twice. The first time I followed it pretty closely and had good results. The second time I diverged just a bit and had fantastic results. These are the changes: sunflower oil instead of canola oil and poured out just a bit less, added an extra dash or two of soymilk, used a tablespoon of water and a teaspoon of egg replacer instead of flax seeds.

The next step was to slather on the marshmallow cream. If you do this while the cookie is still warm it will melt nicely and have a smooth look on top.

Finally, I did my own take on the fudge frosting by using the chocolate ganache recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I only used a touch because the marshmallow topping already sweeten the cookie to the max. My final batch came out the best... but here's a look at the first:

I really loved these cookies but I decided they weren't up to "epic" standards... a label I've been enjoying for my baking lately. Instead, I settled on "smepic" ... "a smidge below epic" ...

And you know, these cookies really wanted to be vegan... but the grocery stores here in the Middle East didn't want to play along. Use Ricemellow if you can find it and you'll be off to a good start. The other animal product to sneak in was some milk fat in the chocolate I melted for the ganache, but vegan chocolate should be easy for you to find.