They’re rolling in dough!
Visitors to outdoor food festival Smorgasburg, which returns this weekend, can get a taste of a brand new dessert: a chewy and gooey concoction that combines the best elements of raw cookie dough and crispy mozzarella sticks. The sweet and crispy treat evokes a classic cookie, with a layer of fried, funnel cake-like batter covering a ball of warm dough, according to one of its creators.
“It’s a crispy exterior that also gives you a little bit of that chewy cookie crust, with molten raw cookie dough in the center,” said Matt Gallira, the president of fried cheese purveyors Big Mozz. “And the awesome thing is, if you overcook it — it just turns into a cookie.”
Gallira, who lives in Fort Greene, helped to cook up the creation last summer, when his snack stand was stationed next to raw cookie dough sellers Do at a music festival in the northern hinterlands of Queens. During a slow moment, the founder of the cookie dough company suggested frying up some of the sweet stuff, she recalled.
“I basically said, ‘We should try and throw some cookie dough in the fryer and see what happens,’ ” said Downtown resident Kristen Tomlan. “We tried it, and it was one of the best things we had had.”
At Smorgasburg, the deep-fried balls of cookie dough will be sold in six-packs, each containing two chocolate chip, two cake batter, and two brownie batter balls. The package of a half-dozen doughy delights will cost $12.
And unlike the cookies you might mix in your kitchen, this raw dough is safe to eat, said Tomlan, because pasteurized eggs and heat-treated flour keep out the bacteria that causes salmonella. So gluttons can get all the pleasure of eating raw dough without worry, Tomlan said.
“You get a little of the baked and unbaked, and it’s warm and gooey and delicious,” she said.
Another sweet new arrival to the food festival is the King Street Kitchen stand, where the former pastry chef from famed Manhattan eatery Eleven Madison Park will serve up a gluten-free olive oil and citrus bundt cake, along with other pastries. And before dessert, Brooklyn foodies can sample new savory snacks from around the world, including a Honduran bean, cheese, and avocado tortilla dish from 504 HN Market, or Korean fried chicken from newcomer Dashi Fried Chicken. The Williamsburg outpost will feature even more new options, including Downtown Middle Eastern restaurant Boutros, which will bring its pork shawarma tacos and bulgur fried rice to the market; and Himalayan Horizon, which will serve the street food shabaley — fried circular dough pockets filled with buffalo, beef, and potatoes and topped with spicy sauces.
Smorgasburg at East River Park (90 Kent Ave. at N. Seventh Street in Williamsburg, www.smorg
