Chocolate-Tipped Cream-Puff Pocky Sticks
Ingredients
Directions
Ingredients
¼ c
water
¼ c
milk
4 tbsp
(1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 tsp
sugar
¼ tsp
fine sea salt
½ c
all-purpose flour
2 lg
eggs
FOR THE GLAZE (Milk or Dark Chocolate)
3 oz
milk, semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 tsp
flavorless oil, such as canola
FOR THE GLAZE (White Chocolate–Matcha)
3 oz
good-quality white chocolate, finely chopped
1 tsp
flavorless oil, such as canola
½ tsp
culinary-grade matcha powder
Sanding or pearl sugar or sprinkles for decorating (optional)
Chocolate-Tipped Cream-Puff Pocky Sticks
Inspired by the Japanese chocolate-capped biscuits called Pocky sticks, these crisp cookies are piped as long as grissini and as slender as swizzle sticks. Baked until they’re break-with-a-snap crisp, glazed with chocolate and finished with a sprinkling of sugar, they’re nifty served alongside ice cream, as an after-dessert nibble or a snack. I think these are most stylish—and the most fun—when they’re piped a foot long, but they’re also attractive at half the length.
25-50 sticks (25 long or 50 short)
- A WORD ON QUANTITIES: If you decide to make shorter sticks, you’ll need to make more glaze. The glaze recipes are easily doubled; or make one recipe of each glaze.
- Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat it to 350 degrees F. Using a ruler and pencil, draw 12-inch-long lines, separated by ¾ to 1 inch, on two sheets of parchment, 13 to 15 per sheet. Or, if you want shorter sticks, draw lines that are about 6 inches long. Flip the paper over and line the baking sheets with it.
- Have a pastry bag fitted with a plain ¼-inch-diameter tip at hand. Or cut a ¼-inch opening in the tip of a disposable pastry bag or a bottom corner of a large ziplock bag.
- Put the water, milk, butter, sugar and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. When the butter is melted, add the flour all at once, grab a sturdy flexible spatula and begin beating.
- Beat until you’ve got a dough that pulls away from the pan and leaves a film on the bottom (you might not get a film if your pan is nonstick), about 4 minutes.
- Turn the dough out into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or into a large bowl that you can use with a hand mixer (or the sturdy spatula). Add the eggs one by one, beating for a minute after each goes in. You’ll have a smooth, shiny dough.
- Scrape the dough into the pastry or ziplock bag and dab a bit of dough onto the corners of the baking sheets to anchor the parchment. Using steady pressure and holding the tip of the pastry bag at a 45-degree angle close to the parchment, pipe the dough from the top of each line to the bottom.
- Bake the sticks for 25 minutes, quickly rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back after 12 minutes. Turn off the oven, open the door a crack—hold it open with a wooden spoon—and let the sticks dry for about 15 minutes, at which point they should feel firm and you should be able to peel them off the paper easily.
- Cool the sticks on the baking sheets or on racks.
TO GLAZE THE STICKS
- To make either or both glazes, combine the ingredients in a small microwave-safe bowl or a small heatproof bowl. Melt the chocolate in the microwave or over a pan of simmering water, stirring to blend.
- The easiest way to glaze the fragile sticks is to lay them out on a lined baking sheet and spoon some of the glaze over one end of each stick. Alternatively, you can dip the sticks into the glaze. Scatter the sugar or sprinkles over the chocolate while it’s still wet. Slide the sticks into the refrigerator to let the glaze set, about 30 minutes.
- STORING: The sticks are best the day they’re made. If you’ve got leftovers, or if they soften—and if you haven’t glazed them—pop them into a 350-degree-F oven for 5 to 10 minutes.
Excerpted from Baking with Dorie © 2021 by Dorie Greenspan, Photography by Mark Weinberg. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.