Hello again Friends and Fellow Bakers! Here we are at bake #9 and rolling along nicely if I do say so myself. Today I am talking about Stroopwafels (recipe here) which were featured on Season 4, Episode 3: cookie week on GCBS.
Personal stories, hmm? Oh, Do You mean stories like the one where I made sugar cookies that I don’t even like for hours on Christmas break every year for no damn reason because my mother randomly decided it was a family tradition even though I was the only one doing it? And then no one even ate them except for my BFF [-> because he is NICE; the cookies were ALWAYS crap] the next day while we were drunk watching the Sound of Music (another random, made up “Christmas tradition” I dutifully submitted to)? FESTIVE!
Or how about the time my sister and I completely failed to add the flour to a batch of cookies and the batter melted in the oven and we had to throw the whole thing out and then she lost interest so I re-made it by myself?
Or how about the time I kept one of my friends up past midnight on a workday because I only had an apartment sized oven at the time and for some idiotic reason I decided to do a cookie swap at a Scout troop (I made lace cookies to show off, see my brandy snaps post for details on that aspect of my neurosis) so I made them at her house after getting off work at like 7pm and it took forever? The list goes on.
The point is, I suspect the reason why I don’t really like making cookies is I don’t have many positive memories of making them, at least not compared to the myriad other baking formats I like to play with. Or at least I didn’t until now! Much like my journey through facing my fear of laminated dough (see my posts about Pithivier, Cannoncini, and Palmiers if you want to hear about that voyage), my Stroopwafels were super delicious and I had a nice laid back, chill afternoon putting them together while having a laugh listening to comedy podcasts. So let’s get to it!
Stroopwafels are a cookie from the Netherlands, cooked in a waffle iron (but not one like a Belgian waffle iron: I used this one which is for making ice cream cones) and then sandwiched with stretchy caramel filling. I love store bought stroopwafels and this was a totally unfamiliar method for me, so I was pretty stoked to learn how to make these. This cookie has a simple, humble appearance, but the judges had a lot of specific criteria they were looking for: caramel has to have a pull; the cookies should be “chewy crunchy” ( ? -> great editing on that one, CBC); perfectly circular, clean-cut shape; the caramel should be spread all the way to the edge but not oozing out the sides; consistent bake; and the contestants were not given the bake time in the recipe.
Step 1: Dough
One of the many things that makes Stroopwafels unique is the fact that they are YEASTED (yeast is generally used in baking to make things RISE) and then PRESSED FLAT IN AN IRON. What is this madness? According to the show, this is what makes the “chewy crunchy” (again I say, WTF CBC) texture happen. As incoherent as that sounds, now that I have made the cookies, I kind of understand the yeast thing if not the insane adjective pairing. Basically, the cookie gets crispy on either side but puffs a little and stays a bit moist in the middle thanks to the yeast. This makes the cookie easier to split and gives the final sandwich a sort of bend and snap (not that bend and snap, lol) if you break it:
BUT I AM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF
Flour, yeast, sugar, salt and a hint of cinnamon are mixed, then butter is grated in. One of the things I really loved about eating these were all the subtle flavours. This is the definition of sugar- spice-all-things-nice; there is **just** enough salt in this dough (same with the caramel) that you can taste it, and it is PERFECT.
Egg and water are added to bring the dough together, then it’s left to proof… ish. Proofing (aka Proving) is referred to as such because you are DEMONSTRATING (that is to say, you are proving it) the fact that the yeast is alive. This is evident (that is to say, it is proven) by the rise of the dough. Since this particular dough doesn’t really rise, I wouldn’t strictly call this proofing. It’s more like a little pre-game snack for the yeasties as they break down some of the sugar, and they need some time to do their thing.
Step 2: Caramel Filling
I have mentioned before that I have a love-hate relationship with sugar work, but there is a lovely loophole in this version that takes the level of hate down several orders of magnitude: CORN SYRUP. Syrups are invert sugars which means, among other things, they are liquid at room temperature. This liquid matrix prevents the dreaded crystallization that can happen when glucose (that is, non-inverted sugar) is boiling. As soon as I saw the caramel for this recipe contained butter and corn syrup, I knew I was flying. Generally speaking, working with pure hot sugar is when the horror sets in; add some fat and corn syrup and you are on your way to a perfect bake.
Step 3: Baking (ironing) and Assembly, with commentary about the iron
The rested dough gets divided into 14 equal portions and rolled into balls. Each ball is pressed in the iron until golden. On the show they were using what was called “a special iron” (so educational, thanks CBC, wtf) that had different heat settings. I tried to find a “Stroopwafel iron” for this, but I couldn’t find anything so specific. I was also trying to keep my budget reasonable… how much use am I really going to get out of such a specific iron? Also I hate big, bulky appliances that rarely get used. It’s such a waste of space it makes me crazy. So the little Cucino thing I bought was just fine, all things considered. It gave me what I expected for $50. It only has one heat setting and I had to lean on it with all of my upper body weight to press the waffles because it didn’t have a latch. Not the end of the world. It got the job done, the non stick is decent, and its smaller than many of my pots and pans. I GUESS YOU CAN STAY, CUCINO. For now.
Next, the warm waffles are cut into circles. They didn’t have a 4-inch round cutter at the Bulk Barn and I don’t think I bothered looking anywhere else couldn’t find one on Amazon, but I did have a nearly empty candy tin that was EXACTLY 4 inches. Jackpot! Dave assisted by cutting the blunt edge off of the tin with his incredibly rusty tin snips and poking some holes in it with a nail, and then I evened it up with heavy duty scissors, and thus a cookie cutter was born. Cheapness Laziness INGENUITY is happening here at Baking Summit, I tell you what. Although now I am wondering why we didn’t try using a can opener first…
The challenge with this assembly is the cookies have to be cut out and split while they are still hot as they harden up a bit as they cool. If they are overcooked, they will be too brittle and crumbly. If they are under cooked, the inside will be mushy. Part of the challenge on the show was the time constraint, of course, since the bakers had to cut and split one cookie while the other was on the iron. Obviously I was at my leisure to do one at a time and get them right (although by the time I was half way through I had the hang of it and was doing one while the next was cooking).
Once the cookies are split, a scoop of caramel is dropped on and then spread out almost to the edge of the cookie. The other half of the cookie is placed on top and then the two sides are pressed together in order to get the caramel to spread all the way to the edge without leaking out. If needed, the caramel can be kept warm on a double boiler to keep it spreadable.
So there we have it. These were so insanely delicious. Like, really good. Could my attitude towards cookies be shifting? PERHAPS (although sugar cookies can go back to the bland hellscape from whence they came). WIth that being said, here we are barreling down on bake number TEN! I wonder which one of my deep seated neuroses we will be dealing with next! Time will tell!
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