We’ve Got Cookie Sign: The Bubble & The Christmas Dragon (S13E12 & S13E13)

2023-02-14

Folks, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Between the real holidays, Mystery Hunt, and everything else, I’ve had the last two cookies done for about a month. You’re getting the recipe for one of them. More on that later

The close-out of this season was delightful, and having all three hosts together was exactly what I wanted this to close out on. As for The Bubble: well, that was certainly a movie that was filmed! With a camera! I’m not sure it’s truly the worst movie the series has ever aired, as this was hyped up to be, but things so rarely are.

The whole liminal space vibe of the movie felt like a blank check to dig into the archives of recipes I’ve saved over the years and dig out something out there to match the literally-anything-can-happen-does-this-movie-have-logical-rules thing going on. And somehow, despite every step of the process feeling wrong, was how I decided to attempt what I’ll call This Movie Was The Wurst cookies.

Yes, wurst. Like hot dogs? I had this corndog cookie recipe from ages ago that intrigued me, and I had a pun, and so I set out prepping my tools:

and prepping the hot dogs:

and making a dough:

and generally having an existensial crisis about every step of this process and whether just because I could try and make a corndog-esque cookie, whether that meant I truly should do that. Tampering in god’s domain and all that.

Anyways, much like The Bubble is photographic proof of a movie that was made, here is photographic proof of a cookie that was made:

The cookies were fine! I tried one with some mustard and it worked, surprisingly enough. Here is the recipe I used if you are a completionist, but I have decided that Meat Does Not Belong In A Mostly Sweet Cookie and will not be pursuing the matter further.

Onto The Christmas Dragon. I saw Eric Kim’s Gochujang Caramel Cookies on the NYT website over the holidays and thought they seemed like a great basis for the final cookie of this project. I can’t do meaty cookies, but I love playing around with spicy cookies (see the first cookie of this project), so this felt like a lovely bookend as well.

Making the “caramel” for these Dragon Snickerdoodles starts by mixing brown sugar, softened butter, and a healthy tablespoon of gochujang together until they form a smooth mixture. This gets set aside.

The dough for this is super easy, and you can mix it entirely by hand if your butter’s soft enough. The butter, vanilla, egg, sugar, and spices come together, then the rest of your dry goods get mixed in.

Once you’ve got a soft dough, one place I differed from the original recipe was swirling in the caramel before the dough chills in the fridge. The softer consistency made it easier to really swirl it in so that you have ridges that are spicier than the others.

You really want something like the last photo, so that when you scoop these out, you get a lot of cool color variation as these bake:

The other main area I adapted the recipe was the cookie size. These spread a ton, so you only need 2 Tbsp of dough for each of these to still get a satisfyingly-sized cookie.

I’ve got a few other MST3k-inspired bakes in the back of my brain, but this is it on the cookie project for now. See you in season 14!

Dragon Snickerdoodles

adapted from Eric Kim’s Gochujang Caramel Cookies in the NYT

Ingredients

  • ½ cup (8 tablespoons)/115 grams unsalted butter, very soft
  • 2 packed tablespoons dark brown sugar
  • 1 heaping tablespoon gochujang
  • 1 cup/200 grams granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg, at room temperature
  • ½ teaspoon coarse kosher salt
  • ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • 1½ cups/185 grams all-purpose flour

Instructions

  1. In a small bowl, stir together 1 tablespoon butter, the brown sugar and gochujang until smooth. Set aside for later, at room temperature.
  2. In a large bowl, by hand, whisk together the remaining 7 tablespoons butter, the granulated sugar, egg, salt, cinnamon and vanilla until smooth, about 1 minute. Switch to a flexible spatula and stir in the baking soda. Add the flour and gently stir to combine.
  3. In 3 to 4 separately spaced out blobs, spoon the gochujang mixture over the cookie dough. Moving in long circular strokes, swirl the gochujang mixture into the cookie dough so you have streaks of orange-red rippled throughout the beige. Be sure not to overmix at this stage, as you want wide, distinct strips of gochujang.
  4. Place this large bowl in the refrigerator until the dough is less sticky but still soft and pliable, 15 to 20 minutes.
  5. While the dough is chilling, heat the oven to 350 degrees and line 2 large sheet pans with parchment.
  6. Dollop out 2 Tbsp scoops of dough on the cookie sheets, putting no more than 6-8 cookies per sheet (these spread.)
  7. Bake until lightly golden at the edges and dry and set in the center, 11 to 13 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. Let cool completely on the sheet pan; the cookies will flatten slightly and continue cooking as they cool.

The cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.