Recipe: Irish Car Bomb Moon Pies

For a girl who drinks sparingly at best...

...these moon pies pack a seriously alcoholic punch.

Bailey's, Guinness, and whiskey.  All wrapped up in one marshmallow-filled, chocolate-covered TRIPLE.DECKER. cookie sandwich.

Suffice it to say, these are not for the faint of heart.

Or the diabetic.

Or the recovering AA member.

Or any child under 21 years of age.  (18, if you're my mother who still believes that that is the legal drinking age. I'm neglecting to tell her otherwise.  For my sister's sake.)  


But a group full of scientists at 10AM on a lazy Wednesday morning who are supposed to be discussing the metabolic state of cancer cell microenvironments and showing graph upon graph full of negative and completely meaningless results (ummm that last part was just me)? 


Well, let's just say that completely not statistically significant data looks much more promising after you've gotten your Irish car bomb moon pie buzz on.  For realz.


I'm fairly certain this holds true for just about any work meeting environment...so go forth and bake...and then force what you've baked upon your unsuspecting coworkers.  And if you happen to neglect to mention just how much alcohol was in these babies until everyone is back at their lab benches and too tipsy to hold a pipette...


...I'll tell you to join the club.  Shrug.  Oops!




Okay, but the real deal with these is that if you are anyone other than a constantly-slightly-dehydrated 25 year old female...these will like not have any effect on you other than the placebo type.  Which is to say that all this sugar and chocolatey deliciousness will rush to your head and make you very.very.happy.

Which isn't such a bad deal either.



They're also perfect for those of us who are absolutely prohibited from drinking on St. Patrick's day this year...due to the whole running-13.1-miles-at-7:30-in-the-morning-the-next-day half marathon thing.

(Not that we were really going to anyway...but at least now we have a less lame excuse than "I don't wanna!")



To be totally honest with you, these are seriously time consuming but in a totally worth your while kind of way.  The chocolate guinness cookies are the easiest roll-out cookies I've ever worked with.  I rolled them out on parchment paper and didn't have to flour either the table or my rolling pin.  That kind of easy.

The marshmallow creme frosting requires boiling sugar and a candy thermometer...but don't be scared.  Once you get over the fear of pouring 230 degree sugar all over your limbs, it's really smooth sailing.  Wear a rubber body suit if you're really concerned...maybe the one from Britney's "Oops! I Did It Again" video.  It's a classic.

And once you get through all that...the chocolate glaze is a piece of cake.  Err moon pie.  Same difference.

Irish Car Bomb Moon Pies
Makes about 2 dozen, cookies adapted from here, marshmallow creme and chocolate glaze adapted from here

Ingredients

For the Chocolate Guinness Cookies:

• 24 oz guinness
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 6 cups AP flour
• 1 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups unsalted butter, softened
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
 

For the Bailey's Marshmallow Creme:

• 2 egg whites
• pinch of cream of tartar
• pinch of salt
• 2/3 cup light corn syrup
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup Bailey's Irish Creme
• 2 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar

For the Whiskey Chocolate Glaze:

• 12 oz semisweet chocolate
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp whiskey

Instructions

For the cookies:

1. Add the beer and brown sugar to a medium saucepan.  Reduce the liquid over medium high heat until it thickens to a syrup and measures approximately 1/3 cup.  This will take about 30-45 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly before using.
2. Preheat oven to 350.  Sift together flour and cocoa powder into a large bowl. Whisk in salt and baking powder until evenly incorporated.
3. Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, until well incorporated, scraping the sides after each addition.
4. Add the Guinness syrup and beat until incorporated. Turn dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Divide into four pieces with a knife or bench scraper. Shape each mound of dough into a ball, flatten into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill for at least one hour.
5. Roll out one disk of cookie dough onto a sheet of parchment paper until 1/4 inch thick. Cut into circles using a 2-inch cookie cutter. Re-roll out scraps of dough and cut into cookies until all is used.  Repeat the rolling/cutting process with the remaining disks of dough. Bake cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 8 to 11 minutes, until the edges are firm and the centers are slightly soft and puffed.
6. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

For the marshmallow creme:

7. Using a mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the the egg whites with the cream of tartar and the salt until firm peaks form, gradually increasing from medium-low speed to medium-high speed as the egg whites gain volume. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, boil the corn syrup over high heat without stirring until it registers 230 to 235 degrees F on a candy thermometer. Slowly drizzle the hot corn syrup into the egg whites and beat at high speed until glossy, about 2 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium-low, beat in the vanilla extract, Bailey's, and the powdered sugar.
8. Using a small cookie scoop, mound the marshmallow filling into the center of 1/3 of the cookies.  Top with another cookie and press lightly to spread the marshmallow to the edges.  Add another mound on top of this cookie and top with a third cookie, pressing down to fill the edges again.  Repeat with remaining cookies.

For the glaze:

9. Using a double boiler, heat the chocolate and the vegetable oil until melted and completely smooth.  Stir in the whiskey.  Place the assembled cookies on a wire rack set over a sheet of wax paper.  Spoon the melted chocolate over each cookie so that it drips down the sides and covers most of the cookie (nudge it if you have to!).  Allow to set up at room temperature for at least two hours before serving.

I am submitting this to the March Sweet Adventures Layer Upon Layer blog hop!


Speaking of eggs, can we talk about eating them raw for a second?  And no, I'm not talking Gaston from Beauty and the Beast style consumption, but rather...the ingestion of tempered eggs.  Eggs that you think you've scrubbed of all their salmonella by bringing them into contact with warm liquids.  Eggs prepared such as those in ice cream or mousse or swiss meringue buttercream or...this marshmallow creme frosting.  Well...we were wrong about them.  As it turns out, they're not as safe to eat as we've always believed.  And while it will probably be okay for those of us with totally efficient immune systems to ingest them, the same is not true for the immunodeficient - those on chemo, small children, and pregnant women, to name a few.

Thankfully, as I learned at an amazing event hosted by Rose Levy Beranbaum a few weeks ago...there is now a solution - Safe Eggs.  These eggs are pasteurized, making them totally safe to eat raw.  Not only that, but they behave exactly the same as non-pasteurized eggs in baking and cooking (and even make for more stable meringues, according to Rose!).  I used them in this marshmallow creme frosting with great results.  And it definitely helped me sleep at night knowing that there was not a single chance that anyone was going to get a bacterial infection from ingesting them.  Score.  I'll definitely be using them in the future for all my raw egg needs!

Thanks so much to Safe Eggs for inviting me to attend the event and to Rose for being so amazing! She was full of the most insane baking tips and was one of the nicest people I've ever met, staying afterwards to talk shop with my friend Lauren and me long after the event had ended.  And did I mention that she baked us a cake?  Key.to.my.heart.  (It was good.  Seriously so.)