Ingredients
Amounts are for the recipe. Sizes, times and temperatures in the method are not scaled.
Cookie base
Peanut butter filling
Milk chocolate coating
Amounts worked out from the other system are rounded.
Method
Cream the shortening and sugar. With a stand or hand mixer, cream the vegetable shortening (95 g½ cup) and caster sugar (70 g⅓ cup) on medium for 4 to 5 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla (2 g½ tsp) and ice water (28 g2 tbsp) and beat until combined.
Add the dry ingredients. Whisk together the cake flour (185 g1½ cups), cornstarch (10 g1½ tbsp), milk powder (30 g¼ cup), baking soda (2 g¼ tsp), baking powder (3.5 g1 tsp) and fine salt (3 g½ tsp). Add to the creamed mixture and mix on low just until the dough comes together. Don't overmix. If the dough cracks when pressed, rest it 5 minutes at room temperature.
Roll and cut. Roll the dough between two sheets of parchment to about 5 mm thick. Cut 4 cm rounds, dock each with a fork and move them to a parchment-lined sheet pan. Re-roll the scraps once. Chill 15 to 25 minutes, depending on how soft the dough feels.
Bake low, then dry. Heat the oven to 150°C (300°F). Bake 15 to 20 minutes, rotating the pan halfway, until pale gold at the edges, not browned. Turn the oven off and leave the cookies inside with the door cracked for 10 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack. They should snap cleanly.
Make the filling. Mix the peanut butter (200 g¾ cup), powdered sugar (65 g½ cup + 1 tbsp) and fine salt (1 g¼ tsp) until smooth and stiff enough to hold a dome. Refrigerate 15 minutes if it is too soft.
Build the domes. Scoop 8 to 10 g of filling onto each cookie and shape it into a dome, leaving a small rim of bare cookie. Freeze at least 20 minutes.
Coat. Melt the milk chocolate (340 g12 oz) with the coconut oil (14 g1 tbsp) gently, in the microwave in 30-second bursts or over a double boiler, and stir until smooth. Dip each frozen cookie with a fork, tap off the excess well, since milk chocolate is fluid, and set on parchment. Let set at room temperature, or refrigerate 10 minutes.
Notes
- Pan. Bake on a regular light-colored aluminum sheet pan on a middle rack. A dark pan or a baking steel browns the bottoms before the insides have dried.
- If they brown too fast at 150°C, cut the milk powder to 20 g. For extra crispness, give them a second bake at 120°C for 15 minutes.
- Coating. If it feels too soft at room temperature, raise the coconut oil to about 20 g. Milk chocolate sets softer than semi-sweet.
- Shaping without rolling. Portion 12 to 15 g balls and press them 5 mm thick with a flat-bottomed glass dipped in flour, or with a tortilla press.
- Don't use vodka in place of the water, and don't melt the shortening. The cookie needs a little gluten and the creamed-in air to snap rather than crumble.
- Freezing. The finished cookies freeze well. Freeze them on a sheet pan until solid, then bag them; they keep 2 to 3 months. Eat them straight from the freezer or after 5 minutes out.