Miraculous Confections

[soc_puppet]

Cookies inspired by the Main Five (plus the main supervillains):

Ladybug: Strawberry chocolate chip; replace some of the eggs with strawberry puree, maybe add in some food coloring and/or extra strawberry flavor

Cat Noir: Chocolate mint chip; replace some flour with black cocoa (no activated charcoal, we don't actually want to destroy anyone) and use green mint chips; possibly add some extra mint flavor to the dough

Rena Rouge: Orange spice cookies; orange flavoring and coloring, possibly orange zest and orange juice for extra orangey-ness; possibly a pumpkin pie spice blend for the spices? Should have cinnamon and cloves, at the very least, but should not be pumpkin (orange is a livelier flavor and not necessarily season-bound)

Carapace: Matcha flavor; possibly with a white chocolate coating on one side, or some sort of dried fruit (pear???) mixed in? Matcha alone feels incomplete with a lemon-lime or just lime flat icing drizzle (thank you, norakwami!)

Queen Bee: Honey-lemon shortbread; not sure whether to do anything for stripes; possibly some powdered or crystalized ginger for just a touch of spice, but I don't know how well that would do with the other flavors Lemon-ginger shortbread dipped in crystalized honey or with a honey glaze on top (thanks you, redsixwing!)

Hawkmoth: Lavender shortbread, possibly lavender-cardamom; finally, you, too can emulate Ladybug in Stoneheart's reappearance and bite a supervillain's head off!

Mayura: Blueberry thumbprints with a (tart) red fruit tart rhubarb jam in the middle, per chanter1944; can't decide whether to include extra spices, or what sort they would be if so (I need to go sniff-testing herbs; my brain suggests thyme or rosemary, but I don't usually work with a lot of spice-and-fruit combos in the bakery) norakwami says a touch of thyme has good potential, so going with that! Thank you!


Backup Options:

ghostlyhamburger suggested an alternate Cat Noir option for folks who don't like mint, so I figured I'd give one to him and to Ladybug, just for the folks who still want to support the big two but might not be interested in the main flavors for whatever reason.

Cat Noir backup: Black cocoa with pistachio; no mint (thank you, ghostlyhamburger!)

Ladybug backup: Adzuki cookies? I want something for the spots, and I'd also prefer not cherry flavor (I'm worried that they'd outsell the "main" strawberry chocolate chip cookies).

Miraculous Cookie: Something vegan and gluten-free* for anyone who's allergic to or intolerant of any of the ingredients in the main LB and CN cookies and the typical backup versions; as few of the Big Eight as possible, hopefully none. No idea about flavor or design.

* Either they'd be only as gluten-free as the Dupain-Cheng Bakery can make them (I assume they're a wheat flour bakery, which means pretty much everything is going to have at least trace amounts of gluten), or they'll have a partnership going with a local GF bakery to get these made.

Comments

[krait]

I would definitely want locally-or-homemade rhubarb jam; too many people seem to think rhubarb requires a bucketload of added sugar, which is the exact opposite of the point of my eating it. (I like tart things, okay! Please, world, stop adding a pound of sugar to everything even slightly acidic?) Someone else in the comments suggested redcurrant, and that would be excellent, too; they have excellent tartness and a beautiful colour!

I have never had an issue with shortbread recipes being tricky, but then, I use the most basic recipe in the world, and just adapt it as needed. (I must admit, I laughed hard at the recipe someone linked above; "easy" is not a descriptor I'd use for a recipe that requires a stand mixer, rolling out while chilled, and not one but two refrigeration stages!) The only time I've ever screwed up my shortbread was the first time I tried to make a chocolate version using cocoa; the darker dough made it hard to judge doneness and it got burnt around the edges before I pulled it out.

...Now I need to figure out a honey-ginger version, don't I. This will be tricky!

[chanter1944]

You haven't got a link to the shortbread recipe you use, have you? I'm not sure the one I used during previous attempts was all that marvelous.

I also understood currants to be much more common in Europe than in North America, or at least the States. Not sure about the rest of the world. I should find and try some someday; I've clearly missed out.

[krait]

I have no link, because I memorised it long ago, but here you are:

1.25 c | 150g All-purpose flour
.25 c | 48 g Granulated sugar
3 tbsp | 24g cornstarch
1 stick/8 tbsp | 112 g unsalted butter, softened

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix dry ingredients together thoroughly. Add butter and work into dough. Press dough into shortbread mould or pan, and prick several times with a fork. Bake 30-50 min until golden. Remove from oven. Gently insert knife between shortbread and pan edge, set a wooden cutting board on top of the pan, and invert swiftly to remove shortbread from pan. Use a very sharp knife to cut into servings before fully cool, to prevent cracking.

Once you've built some familiarity, it's easy to come up with variations; you can start with simpler ones, like tossing pieces of fresh raspberries into the dough (do this after mixing, right before it goes into the pan, or your berries will turn to mush), and work up to more complex ones (like substituting .25c flour for cocoa and slightly increasing the sugar, to make chocolate shortbread).

Honestly, I make most of my variations 'by feel;' having made them for so many years, I know what the dough should feel like, so I don't really measure things so much as just, uh, do what I can tell needs to be done to make it the right texture/consistency.

If you like tart flavours, you should definitely try redcurrants! I found redcurrants in the northern US; they grow there, so there are some local sources. They do seem scarcer outside that area, but you can still sometimes find jam or juice in stores (check import markets, though regular grocers may have it in their higher-end jam selections, or 'health-food' juice offerings).

This whole post and thread made me go and eat a can of cranberry sauce, in addition to making shortbread. :D

[chanter1944]

Thank you for the recipe! :D I'll try it and report back the results.

[krait]

You're welcome!

You can use just about any approximately-8-inch-diameter pan for these, if you don't have a shortbread mould; I've even made them in disposable foil baking pans (the round kind meant for rolls). And they are very hard to mess up; the main thing is just not to overknead them after working the butter in, or they'll be kind of tough.

[krait]

Oh, and in case you were curious: the first draft. :D

[soc_puppet]

Count me in on Team Tart! I tend to water down and ice up my cranberry juice to let the tart notes shine out even more~

Here's the shortbread recipe I got when going through the baking program:

Short Dough
(1-2-3 Cookie Dough; Pâte Sucrée)


Yield: 6 pounds, 5.25 ounces (2,873 grams)

Ingredients: U.S. Standard | % | Metric | 18 oz. batch

Sugar, granulated: 1 pound | 15.8 | 454 grams | 2.85 oz

Butter, (unsalted,
room temperature): 2 pounds | 31.6 | 908 grams | 5.75 oz

Eggs, whole: 5.25 ounces (4 ea) | 5.2 | 150 grams | 1 oz

Flour, pastry: 3 pounds | 47.4 | 1,361 grams | 8.5 oz

Total Yield: 6# 5 ¼ oz. | 100 | 2,873 grams | 1# 2oz.


Method of Preparation:
1. Gather all the ingredients and equipment.
2. Scale ingredients.
3. In the bowl of a stationary mixer fitted with a paddle, cream the sugar and butter.
4. Add the eggs gradually. Scrape well.
5. Add the flour and mix on low speed until well blended.
6. Refrigerate before using.


...Oof, that copied out roughly. I may see about separating out the different batch sizes in a fresh comment. Still, it shouldn't take too much math to figure out how much lavender to add to get the same flavor as the one Alex linked, even with the added eggs.



Please share if you figure out the honey-ginger-lemon recipe! I really want to be able to see/taste the results of, well, all of these 😜