Banana Moonpies

February 21, 2011 in cookie

It’s officially Mardi Gras season, which is only the best time of the year! For the new kids around here, I live in Mobile, AL which is the birthplace of Mardi Gras. Every year, thousands and thousands of people descend upon our downtown from all over the Gulf Coast all in the hopes of leaving with a trunk full of beads, stuffed animals, and most importantly, moonpies.

(Mobile is also the only place in the world that drops a moonpie on New Years. You can’t make this stuff up, people.)

It’s been my goal to make moonpies every year since I started blogging but there are zero moonpie recipes on the interwebz and I didn’t know where to start. Finally a chocolate moonpie recipe popped up and I was able to adapt it to make my favorite kind: banana!

Banana moonpies are one of those things that you love or you hate. The coating has that fake banana taste (think banana Laffy Taffy) that seems to bother a lot of people but I adore it and I’m not above an elbow to the ribs if I see a banana moonpie coming towards me at a parade. Yeah, don’t stand by me.

This recipe, while not difficult, did take all day. You have to make dough, chill dough, bake dough, cool dough. Then make marshmallows, pipe marshmallows, cool marshmallows. Then you have to melt coating, use coating, cool coating.

But it’s so worth it. They taste exactly like the store-bought moonpies but better because homemade marshmallows make everything better.

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Banana Moonpies

adapted from Food Network

Ingredients

For the dough:
12 tablespoons butter
¾ cup powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup all-purpose flour
For the marshmallows:
¼ cup water
¼ cup light corn syrup
¾ cup sugar
2 egg whites
1 tablespoon confectioners gelatin
2 tablespoons cold water
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
For the coating:
12 ounces white chocolate, chips or chopped finely
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ teaspoon banana extract

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350F.
  2. In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter until soft and smooth. Add the sugar and continue mixing until well blended. Add the vanilla and mix until light and fluffy.
  3. In a separate bowl, stir together cornstarch and flour. With the mixer running at low speed, add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and blend just until combined. Form the dough into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap and chill at least 2 hours or overnight.
  4. On a floured work surface, using a floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to ⅛-inch thick. Use flour-dipped biscuit cutters to cut out circles and place them on an ungreased sheet pan, leaving 1-inch between the cookies. You can re-roll the scraps. Bake until just golden around the edges, 12 to 14 minutes.
    5. To make the Marshmallows:
  5. Combine the ¼ cup water, the corn syrup, and the sugar in a saucepan fitted with a candy thermometer. Bring to a boil and cook to “”soft-ball”" stage, or about 235F.
  6. Meanwhile, in a standing mixer fitted with a whisk, whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Sprinkle the gelatin over the 2 tablespoons water and let dissolve. When the syrup reaches 235F, remove it from the heat, add the gelatin, and mix. Pour the syrup into the whipped egg whites. Add the vanilla and continue whipping until stiff.
  7. Transfer the mixture to a pastry bag fitted with a round tip. Pipe a “”kiss”" of marshmallow onto half of the cookies, and top with the rest to make sandwiches. Let set at room temperature for 2 hours.
    8. To make the coating:
  8. Melt the white chocolate and vegetable oil together in the top of a double boiler or a bowl set over barely simmering water, stirring occasionally. Once melted, stir in banana extract. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. One at a time, gently drop the marshmallow-filled cookies into the hot chocolate. Lift out with a fork and let the excess chocolate drip back into the bowl. Place on the cookie sheet and let set at room temperature until the coating is firm, about 1 to 2 hours.
http://fakeginger.com/2011/02/21/banana-moonpies/

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