I have yet to meet someone that doesn’t like Gilmore Girls. The show about super independent, single mom Lorelai, her daughter Rory and their navigation of life in the small town of Stars Hollow. The town is filled with quirky characters which balance the presence of Lorelai’s rich, manners obsessed parents. The writing of this show is so good!! The dialogue is very fast paced and filled with pop culture references. In 2016 the show was revived on Netflix with a four episode miniseries. What makes Lorelai and Rory such memorable characters is their amazing relationship as well as their ability to eat copious amounts of junk food.
A favorite junk food staple of the girls is a simple burger and fries from the local diner and coffee. Lots of coffee. However, in order to gear up for the revival I have re-watched the entire series and I discovered an interesting and meaningful little treat amongst all the snack food: Sookie’s Rocky Road Cookies.
They are featured in the episode “Love and War and Snow” from season one. Sookie makes the cookies so that Rory can give them to Dean. This is where the significance is; the rocky road cookies are totally symbolic of Rory and Dean’s relationship. Through the course of seven seasons Rory and Dean had breakups, makeups, love, sex, infidelity and the excitement of first love. Rory gives Dean the cookies at the very beginning of their romance; an excellent foreshadowing of their entire relationship.
Traditionally, Rocky Road is known as a chocolate flavored ice cream that contains nuts and marshmallows so I had to figure out a way to transform the ice cream into a cookie. I started thinking about the dough and decided to go with the chocolate, obviously. I kicked the flavor up a notch by I melting some real chocolate and adding it to the dry ingredients that included cocoa just for good measure.
Once I had the basic dough together I added in the walnuts and marshmallows and chocolate chips for good measure. I decided to add the marshmallows into the batter because I thought that they would give the cookies a more gooey texture.
The most important part of this process is to use parchment paper! When the cookies are done baking they are still very fragile and will fall apart if you move them too soon or if they stick at all. So after taking the cookies out of the oven I let them cool on the cookie sheet for five minutes and then moved the paper to the cooling rack until the cookies were completely cool. After they were completely cooled they were wonderful; they were sweet and gooey and crunchy.
These cookies have a great complexity of texture and flavor. My conclusion is that the taste, as well as the name, are a clever foreshadowing of Rory and Dean’s relationship.
Sookie’s Rocky Road Cookies:
- 2 cups chocolate chips, divided
- 6 tablespoons butter
- ¾ cup flour
- ¼ cup cocoa powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 large eggs
- ⅔ cup brown sugar
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla or chocolate extract
- 3/4 cup marshmallows
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
- Melt 1 cup of the chocolate chips with the butter in the top of a double boiler until smooth. Remove from the heat, and let it cool to room temperature.
- Preheat the oven to 325F. Line cookie sheet pans with parchment paper and set aside.
- To make the batter, combine the flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder in a small bowl, and set aside. In a large bowl, beat the eggs, brown sugar, and extract, about 2 minutes.
- Stir in the flour mixture and cooled chocolate, and beat for 1 minute. Fold in the remaining 1 cup chocolate chips, the marshmallows, and the nuts, if using.
- Drop the batter by spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheet pans about 2 inches apart. Bake for approximately 10 minutes, or until just firm.
- Remove from the oven, transfer to a wire rack, and cool for 5 minutes before removing from the cookie sheet pans. Let the cookies cool completely before removing them from the parchment paper.
