It’s wild to me that I’ve had the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook for over 10 years now, but have still only made one cookie out of it. The recipes are a bit high maintenance for me, and usually require one or two ingredients that I don’t keep stocked in my kitchen. I pulled it out again last month though, to make a treat for my friend Suzanne. We met at work last year and instantly bonded over our love for baking and all things funfetti, so when she told me she was leaving for a new job, I immediately knew what her goodbye treats would be.

This recipe is basically Cookie Inception. First up, you make a batch of Birthday Cake Crumbs, which are little crunchy cookie crumbles that eventually get folded into the Confetti Cookie Dough. The dough itself has a couple of Ms. Tosi’s unusual ingredients: instant milk powder, corn syrup and clear vanilla extract.  Again, I followed all of her instructions exactly, including the eight minute creaming time, and the cookies turned out perfectly. Like the Compost Cookies, they spread out to be huge and flat, but stay chewy in the middle.

Suzanne cried when I gave them to her, if that’s any indication of how good they were!

Confetti Cookies

Source: Momofuku Milk Bar by Christina Tosi

*Note that I used my kitchen scale to make these so I’ve listed everything in grams*

Ingredients

• 225 g butter, room temperature (1 cup or 2 sticks)
• 300 g sugar
• 50 g light corn syrup
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp clear vanilla extract
• 400 g flour
• 50 g milk powder
• 9 g cream of tartar
• 6 g baking soda
• 5 g salt
• 40 g rainbow sprinkles
• batch Birthday Cake Crumb (separate recipe, see below)

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine the butter, sugar and corn syrup and cream together on medium-high speed for 2-3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the eggs and vanilla, and mix again for 7-8 minutes. (The long creaming process is essential to the success of the recipe, as Christina explains in the book. I actually timed it to ensure I did it for long enough. Don’t skip this!)
2. Add the flour, milk powder, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt and rainbow sprinkles. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than one minute. I actually mixed the dry ingredients in by hand, then used the hand mixer just for a few seconds.
3. On low speed, add the Birthday Cake Crumbs and mix just until combined.
4. Line a baking sheet or plate with parchment paper. Use a kitchen scale to measure out 2 3/4 oz balls of dough (or a 1/3 cup measuring cup) and rolls them into balls and place them on the prepared pan/plate. Press down the tops of the cookies slightly. Cover the pan/plate tightly with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour. You are not supposed to bake the cookies from room temperature, or they won’t turn out.
5. When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°, and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Place the cookies on the sheet, at least 4″ apart – I could fit 6 cookies on one sheet. Bake for 18 minutes – the cookies are going to spread quite a bit, and turn brown around the edges.
6. Let the cookies cool completely on the pan and then store in an airtight container.

Birthday Cake Crumb

Ingredients

• 50 g sugar
• 12 g light brown sugar
• 45 g cake flour
• 1 g baking powder
• 1 g salt
• 10 g rainbow sprinkles
• 20 g grapeseed oil
• 6 g clear vanilla extract

Directions

1. Heat the oven to 300° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix together the sugar, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and sprinkles in a medium bowl until combined.
3. Add the oil and vanilla and use a spatula to mix together until small clusters form. I chilled mine for about half an hour before baking.
4. Spread the clusters on the prepared baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. You can try to gently flip them over and break them up about halfway through baking, but they will still be quite soft (they’ll harden as they finish baking and cool).
5. Let the crumbs cool completely before using in the cookies. You can make these up to a week in advance; just store them in an airtight container in the fridge.