Minecraft Cookie | Arcade with Alvin

– [Babish] This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I used Squarespace to build both Basics with Babish and bingingwithbabish.com. On the sites, you’ll find recipes, equipment lists, other news and updates all beautifully designed if I do say so myself. Get 10% off your first Squarespace order by visiting squarespace.com/babish. – [Alvin] Hello there. Welcome back to another episode of Arcade with Alvin. Today, I’ll be making the cookie from Minecraft. According to the game, all we need for this recipe are two ingredients, wheat and cocoa beans. Let’s head over to the crafting table to get started.

In our three by three grid found inside our crafting table, we will now commence with the recipe. It starts with one wheat on the right, cocoa beans in the middle and another wheat on the left and that should be good to go and craft. It’s supposed to craft. Not sure what’s going on.

Craft. Maybe something’s wrong with my crafting table. I guess I’ll have to actually cook this. Our cookie recipe calls for two wheat which I will interpret into two tablespoons of all-purpose flour. Next up, cocoa beans, about a handful or so and just give ’em a good old mix in the bowl.

Once everything is combined, the cookie dough down goes onto a sheet tray lined with parchment paper. Just like any other cookie, I’m gonna bake this at around 350 degrees for about 15 minutes or so until golden brown. Oh, would you look at that? Golden brown all around.

That is strikingly similar to the real thing. After letting our cookie rest for about five minutes until it cools, we’re gonna go ahead and see how it tastes. Gonna, okay, should, should I? Yeah, that ain’t it, chief. Yeah, this is gonna be a no for me, dog. I ain’t trying to eat that.

So how do we bake a cookie that looks like the one from the game? We turn to the game for inspiration particularly its pixelated nature which could be an interesting way to piece together a cookie pixel by edible pixel. To start, we’re gonna make a modified cookie dough

First combining 1100 grams of all-purpose flour, a tablespoon of kosher salt and one and a half teaspoons of baking powder into a bowl mixing to combine then set aside. Now, we go to our large stand mixer which in goes 300 grams of unsalted butter and 300 grams of vegetable shortening

Both softened and left out at root temperature. Next to the party is 450 grams of white sugar and 250 grams of dark brown sugar. Using our paddle attachment, this mixture gets creamed on high until fluffy, about four to five minutes. Once everybody’s having a good time in there,

We now start to add eggs, four of them but one at a time making sure to scrape down the bowl between each addition and adding two teaspoons of vanilla extract at the end. You might think, “hey, scraping is unnecessary, it’s all gonna get in there anyways” and you’re probably right

But it does feel a lot more satisfying when you do it and once everything in there is looking and smelling good, now the dry ingredients go in all at once just like I did if you like to make a mess that is. As you can see, the dry ingredients have started to overflow

In which we will need to employ a technique passed down from generations of bakers, Saran wrap to shield the outside thing. Trust me, this is textbook. Once our dough is combined, this gets tipped out onto a large surface that is also lined with Saran wrap. There’s gonna be some pockets of dough

That might not have fully incorporated with flour so we’re gonna need to make sure that gets all mixed in. I like to use the Saran wrap just as a way to kind of press the dough without getting my fingers all sticky but the goal here is to get this

Into one large rectangular sheet. If you seal all the sides with Saran wrap, you can use a rolling pin or any flat rolling utensil and push it towards the edges at which the Saran wrap will catch it. This makes for a nice, smooth, round and relatively flat shape

That will now go into the refrigerator for about two hours. Next up, how about a chocolate dough? This process is pretty much identical to the first dough. 225 grams of all-purpose flour, 50 grams of cocoa powder, half a teaspoon of kosher salt and half a teaspoon of baking powder in a bowl

And in the stand mixer, 75 grams of unsalted butter, 75 grams of shortening, 125 grams of white sugar and 50 grams of brown sugar creamed until fluffy and this time adding only one egg and one half teaspoon of vanilla extract. We are still doing the scraping though. That is mandatory.

Once the party’s looking pretty good in there, we’re adding all the dry ingredients in and mixing for about a minute or so making sure not to overwork the dough. This deep chocolate dough now gets rolled onto a piece of Saran wrap, flattened, wrapped and rolled into a thin round flat shape.

It joins its paler, larger brethren in the fridge. Once both doughs are firm and cold to the touch, we’re now going to roughly shape them into rectangles for stenciling. I’m using the Saran wrap here to try and reform this dough into a rectangle that’s about three quarters of an inch in thickness.

With the help of a ruler and some bench scrapers, the shape is eventually attained. This goes into the freezer to set up really quick. For the chocolate dough, the process is very similar except this one is only gonna be about a half inch thick for a strategy we’re going to explore later.

Once both doughs are semi frozen and extra firm, I’m marking squares that are roughly one and a half inches by one and a half inches across the whole dough. Once this looks like a chessboard folded in half, the squares are now released from their stenciled prisons with a sharp knife.

The sharper the knife, the swifter the cut. The swifter the cut, the less pain the dough feels. Good thing you can’t hear them screaming in the back. It’s quite loud. Once both doughs have been cut into their own pixelated edible soldier army, we’re now gonna take a pizza stone

That’s lined with parchment paper and assemble the shape of a cookie on top attempting to mirror the design of the cookie in the game pixel by pixel. The plain dough goes down first creating a skeleton and the holes are essentially the negative space in which the chocolate dough will fill in.

These will be our chocolate chips so to speak. Now you might be wondering, “why not not just fill those with huge chunks of chocolate” and you’re half right. We’re gonna place squares of both dark and milk chocolate right on top of each of the chocolate dough squares which have been conveniently cut

To a quarter of an inch less thick than their surrounding counterparts. That way they can be perfectly pressed in just like that. The idea of filling each hole solely with chocolate was a delicious one but I was scared they were actually gonna melt in the oven

Causing the sides of the other dough to cave in so like many things in life, we compromise. All right, thanks Andrew, this is now a co-op game. Once our finished pixelated cookie is assembled square by square, this is how it looks before it goes into the oven. I mentioned modified dough earlier

Because this is actually a dough that is designed not to spread. Shortening unlike butter typically can prevent spreading compared to other kinds of cookies so this dough is more of a shortbread like dough kinda like the Christmas cookies that you can shape and get. With the help of Andrew,

This cookie is now transported to the oven carefully, 325 degrees for quite a long time. I think we ended up baking this for almost an hour. Out the cookie comes with the help of Andrew again and here we go. Oh, nope, other way. Go the other way.

Yeah, there we go, that’s the front. This is our cookie. It is golden brown on all the sides and for the last final touch, I like to kinda push in a few extra chocolate squares. Maybe this is a personal thing but I actually enjoy the taste

And feel of half melted chocolate in a cookie. There’s something about that melty fudginess with that chunk that feels really good. I present to you our version of the cookie from Minecraft assembled pixel by a pixel with milk chocolate, dark chocolate and two kinds of doughs, a shortbread style dough.

Here are some more angles and to eat, this kind of feels like a pull apart dish, something you might serve at a party. Flavor check, that’s a good cookie. Not as chewy or as dense or as fudgy as a normal chocolate chip cookie but still just as delicious.

Here is a bite with all three of the things in one spoonful. I will give this to you, Andrew. You deserved it. I think he likes it. Yeah, I do too, that’s a good cookie. It’s kind of really just a fun thing to eat. You just keep pulling at it.

You have guests that might be hungry and they just come steal it and there’s nobody to stop you from doing whatever you want to this cookie. In this case, Andrew and I will both employ our love for Maldon salt right on top of the cookie. Andrew goes for the direct sprinkle.

I’m a man of the people. I like to help out everybody just a little bit. This is kind of the final touch that I think makes this cookie shine. A little bit of saltiness really does help the chocolate and the butter and all the goodness just pop out a little bit more.

Are you, you’re gonna save, you’re gonna save some for the rest of the crew or? I’m gonna cut some pieces right along the pixel marks. That way you can get nice little squares for everybody. – [Babish] Thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring today’s episode. They’ve been a great partner

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