I type this as I am arms deep into a bag of popcorn. I love popcorn with a fiery passion. I see movies in theatres so I can get my usual order of large popcorn with extra layered butter. When the movie is playing, I always tilt the popcorn bag towards the screen so I can use the light from the screen to find the pieces that are most heavily coated in butter. I truly am just there for the popcorn. Before I was a theatre butter popcorn girl, I was theatre Poptopia popcorn girl. The theatre I frequented the most had its own Poptopia booth where they scooped the flavours to order. I always got a medium sized bag of half Chicago Mix and half cheddar. The 75% ratio of cheddar was my ideal ratio. The Poptopia booth at my theatre might have closed down, but my love for Chicago Mix is tried and true. This cookie is my love letter to the best popcorn flavour to ever exist.
This Chicago Mix cookie encapsulates the sweet and savoury, caramel and cheddar flavours of this popcorn flavour in more than just one way. The base of the cookie is a tender brown sugar cookie with crisp edges that echoes the caramel flavours of the popcorn and it leans a bit more savoury with the addition of cheddar powder. The cheddar powder in the cookie dough doesn’t make the dough taste necessarily cheesy, but gives a distinct savouriness to it. Caramel corn is folded into the dough as a cookie mix in and each cookie is finished with a dusting of cheddar powder. How you choose to dust the cheese powder is truly up to you, but I like dusting it on one side of the cookie, while leaving the other side plain. Unlike all my other cookies, I omitted flaky salt on top because the cookie gets enough savouriness from the cheddar powder.
Chicago Mix Cookie (Cheddar and Caramel Popcorn)
Ingredients
- 140 g (1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 126 g (1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp) brown sugar
- 100 g (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 210 g (1 3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
- 2 tbsp cheddar cheese powder
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 70 g (2 cups) caramel popcorn
Garnish
- 35 g (1 cup) caramel pop
- 2 tbsp cheddar cheese powder
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar on medium speed until they are smooth, about 1 minute.
- Add the vanilla and egg to the butter mixture and mix on medium speed until they are fully incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cheddar cheese powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in two batches to the butter mixture, and mix until the ingredients are just combined, about 1 minute.
- Roughly chop the caramel popcorn and add to the cookie dough. Using a rubber spatula, fold the popcorn pieces into the cookie dough.
- With a standard ice cream scoop, form 12 even balls of dough.
- Place filled dough balls about 2 inches (5 cm) apart on the baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies for 12 to 14 minutes, or until the cookies are browned and caramelized along the edges and the centres are just set. If you would like your cookies to have the crinkled edges, give the pan a few taps on the oven rack before you take them out of the oven.
- Press a few additional pieces of caramel popcorn onto each cookie right when they come out of the oven. If you place the popcorn pieces on top of the dough balls before baking, the popcorn will burn by the time the cookies are baked.
- Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
- After the cookies have cooled, dust cheddar cheese powder on each cookie.
![day two: sparkly matcha neapolitan shortbread cookies ✨
the instructions might seem confusing, but if you watch the video to see how the different flavour layers are stacked, it will make much more sense! these slice and bake cookies freeze extremely well so you can make the dough now and bake them off when you want to gift them. (makes 40-44)
vanilla dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
matcha dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tsp culinary matcha powder
1/4 tsp salt
strawberry dough
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g 6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tbsp freeze-dried strawberry powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg white
coarse sanding sugar
for the vanilla dough, combine butter and powdered sugar in a bowl. mix until smooth. add vanilla. add flour and salt and mix until no dry streaks remain. do the same for the matcha and strawberry doughs in separate bowls
place one portion of the dough between two pieces of parchment paper and roll into a 5 x 9-inch rectangle that is about 1/4-inch thick. slide rolled out dough onto a baking sheet and freeze for 10 min until firm. repeat this step with the other portions of dough
remove the top piece of parchment from each slab and stack the strawberry, vanilla, and matcha dough layers. cut the slab down the middle the long way to form two 2.5 x 9-inch rectangles. with one half, carefully swap the order of the layers (example: if the first half of the dough is stacked svm, swap the second half so it’s msv. this will ensure that same flavour squares don’t stack on each other). stack the halves. press the layers gently to adhere them. return the stacked dough to the freezer for another 10min
[recipe cont’d in comments]
#christmasbaking #christmascookies #holidaybaking #holidaycookies #cookiedecorating](https://constellationinspiration.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
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