Tur-duc-ookie

Okay, so the name isn't totally accurate but I think it sums up the concept quite well. If you're not familiar with turducken, it's a name often given to a rather ridiculous but somewhat amusing dish consisting of various types of poultry stuffed inside each other (traditionally chicken inside duck inside turkey, but some more adventurous souls have managed to extend the challenge to the extreme; Grimod de La Reynière apparently created a 17-bird equivalent in 1807 (thanks Wikipedia). Overkill, much?

My sugar-infested translation is entirely vegetarian, and (to me!) much more appealing. I spied a recipe for Oreo-filled chocolate chip cookies the other day, and started thinking about the cookie equivalent to turducken - hence "tur-duc-ookie" (hyphens added to avoid unfortunate misreadings!). I liked the cross section view but thought two layers was too few - three seemed the bare minimum.

I grabbed some Oreos from the supermarket, but also thought it'd be good to try with some more Kiwi biscuits as filling too - and the mini Squiggles and Toffeepops seemed just the thing - being smaller made it possible to have a not-too-stupidly-huge tur-duc-ookie

I opted for chocolate chip cookie dough for the inside cookie layer, and afghan dough for the outer layer; I thought the afghan would be a little more likely to be able to hold together around the inner layers, and also hoped for a bit of a layered effect with the lighter coloured dough in between. 

I started off with an Oreo filled tur-duc-ookie; I took a lump of chocolate chip cookie dough, shaped and prodded it till it covered the Oreo completely, and then repeated with the afghan dough. 

The resulting cookie was utterly massive, and I realised that a) anyone who tried to eat the whole thing would probably clog their arteries in one fell swoop, and b) it was really smart to grab the mini cookies so the rest could be a bit smaller. 

Applying the same concept to the mini biscuits yielded a more manageable (but still fairly large - probably heftier than a Cookie Time) result. So I made 12 of them. Cos you know, you can't have too much cookie...

 The Oreo version dwarfed the other - you wouldn't think that the cookie on the right was really several servings in itself. I guess that makes the one on the left a full meal. ;-) (having cornflakes in it means it's breakfast food, right?)

Figuring out when they were cooked was a bit of guesswork, but as it turned out I got it right - the giant cookie took about 20 minutes, and the others about 15. They were cooked just in time for me to bundle them into a container and take them to the Victoria University Summer Shakespeare in the Botanic Gardens - we'd arranged to meet friends for a picnic. I highly recommend it, if you're in Wellington and looking for an evening's entertainment; I thought it was an excellent production, magnificently acted and some fantastic modernisations.

So how did they turn out? Well, as you can see from the cross-section the choclate chip layer doesn't show up very well - perhaps a plain cookie (i.e. no chocolate chips) would have worked better for the in-between layer (and it's not like they needed to be more chocolatey) but they were delicious. We haven't attacked the Oreo one yet, as it seemed a bit scary and this morning we're off to run Round the Bays (well, Mr Cake is already running, as he's mad enough to want to do the half marathon) and suspected it might not be the best running fuel. I don't think it'll last long afterwards though!

It was also a pretty fun experiment - if you want to make the cookies more manageable by all means try with just one type of cookie dough - but we really liked them the way they were.

I won't write up the recipes; if you want to make these the chocolate chip cookie recipe I used is here, and the afghan recipe is here. Half a batch of chocolate chip dough, one batch of afghan dough and a packet of mini toffeepops or squiggles will make about 10 large cookies. Cookie dough freezes excellently, so if you want to make the whole batch or you find you have excess when you're done just wrap it well and pop in the freezer.

Am I completely nuts or do you think tur-duc-ookies might catch on? ;-)