Pillars of Eternity – Darkest Rauatai Cookies

There’s a knock on the door.

“Finally,” you say to yourself grumpily, “I ordered that pizza over an hour ago.”

You get up and walk to the door and open it, finding a man with a red hat and a disinterested look holding your order.

“You uh, order?”

“YES, a while ago actually.” You reach out and grab for the p-

*VWOOSH NOISE*
You’re out of breath. He asked for pineapple on his pizza but the kitchen was out, so you just got back from sprinting across the street to pick some up. As you stumble into the kitchen, you trip over the floor mat and hit the prep table. Hard. Down you go, with a loud wet THUD somewhere behind you. To your utmost terror, the pizza you had worked so hard to complete lay bare, soggy, upside down on the ground. Fear raced across your mind, not knowing whether to flee or hide the evidence. You hear your boss frantic about orders taking too long and you don’t have any choice. You scrape up what you can, throw it in a bag, and run out to your car. The unopened bag of cut pineapples lays on the ground, waiting in earnest to betray your trust and reveal your misdeeds.

-izza… You pause. You think about how hungry you are, and you look up at the delivery person. It wasn’t disinterest in his eyes, it was terror.

I love a lot of what Pillars of Eternity did to make the world more believable and the choices you make more consequential. A game like this typically gives players a good choice and an evil choice to make when confronted with a problem, but Pillars of Eternity does a good job at painting the world in murky morals. Since the player has the uncanny ability to see more into the past of those around them, both live and dead, you have even more information at your disposal to make a choice. Do you help someone? Decide to leave them to their fate because of what they did to bring them here? Remind them the misdeeds they’ve done and suggest a quiet fee for your assistance? Realize they were in fact betrayed by their friend and left to die in a bear’s den? There are lots of choices to make with lots of small variations that actually matter.

Before diving in and playing Pillars of Eternity, I took a quick look at the list of food in the game. The variety of items surprised me and there were many recipes I don’t typically see in games. My stomach immediately wanted a batch of the Darkest Rauatai Cookies. Looking a little further, the item description in the game is just perfection and end with “One feels happier just looking at it.” I agree completely! After looking at the image from the game I got to working on my own recipe. The cookies are sugar cookie-based, covered in coarse sugar, pressed, baked, and then filled with chocolate. What’s not to love?

Ingredients:
Cookie Dough
1 cup butter, room temperature
¾ cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 egg
½ tsp salt
2 cups flour

½ cup coarse sugar

Chocolate Ganache
1 cup dark chocolate
2 ½ tbsp heavy cream
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375°F. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Do not spray with nonstick spray, this will cause the cookies to spread when baking.

Combine the flour and salt in a small bowl. Mix the butter until smooth in a bowl of a stand mixer. Add the sugar and mix until well combined.

Add the vanilla extract and egg. Add the flour and mix until just combined.

Take about 1 to 2 tablespoons worth of dough and roll it up in a ball. Toss in the coarse sugar and make sure all sides are covered.

Place on the prepared baking sheet and lightly press down in the center with your thumb. This will give the indentation needed for the chocolate while flattening the cookie. You want the indent to be about a ¼ inch deep. Repeat until all the dough is used.

Place in the oven and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the cookies are slightly golden brown. After the cookies cook, the indent might have lost its form slightly. Use a spoon to re-push the holes. Make sure to do this while the cookies are warm because they will crack when cooled.

While the cookies are cooling, take a moment to make the ganache. Place the dark chocolate, heavy cream, salt, and butter in a saucepan. Melt until everything combines together. Remove from the heat and mix in the vanilla extract.

Use a spoon to add the chocolate ganache to each of the cookie indents. Allow them to set for about one hour.