Pookies: I tried the viral pancake cookies that are ready in just 10 minutes

Can you imagine dipping a pancake in a tall glass of ice cold milk? What about having a short stack of cookies ready in 10 minutes flat? A new viral Instagram video promises just that, with a catchy name to boot: pookies!

With over 15.5 million views and 400,000 likes in just two weeks, Kayou Kitchen’s Pookies smell like a winner. TKTK STATS

“Kayou” is a portmanteau of the blog’s founders, Katja and Youssef, who asked to be called only by their first names, Sonny-and-Cher-style. “We both like to cook, but also just love food,” Katja told me, “I’m the quick and efficient one, and Youssef enjoys the process and likes to bring things to perfection.” Their year-old blog has recipes riffing on snacks and dishes from all over the world with good reason; Katja is from Germany but has lived in nine different countries, and Youssef is of Moroccan and French descent. Their most popular recipes include a 3-ingredient Basque Cheesecake and several delectable variations on 2-ingredient Palmier Cookies.

Katja has a “sweet spot” for cookies and wanted to devise a simple banana one that anyone could make. “If you tell me something takes 10-plus ingredients or 30-plus minutes, I’ll try to find a way to make it easier, have fewer ingredients, make fewer dishes dirty and do it quicker,” she says. “I’m a lazy cook in that sense.” She tossed a banana into a blender with sugar, flour, baking powder, chocolate and an egg, so that it would be the only thing to wash. Then she shaped the thick batter into cookie shapes on a sheet of parchment and baked at 350 F for just 8 minutes.

But they didn’t come out as she had initially intended. “I noticed the texture was more pancake-y than that of a cookie,” she tells me. Youssef loved them, but, “These are not cookies,” he said, “These are pookies — pancake cookies!”

They sure look promising, but I’ve been burned by purportedly easy-peasy social media recipes before  —and I’m not the only one. Several commenters on the post are asking for feedback from anyone who has taken the pookie plunge. Can they really be that straightforwardly successful? I asked Katja if she had any tips and tricks to share. “No tricks,” she says, “It’s really that simple.”

And you know what? It was.

The only extra tips I want to offer are that if you don’t have a kitchen scale, the European-style recipe with grams might be hard to navigate, so I measured them out. In addition to a banana, an egg and a teaspoon of baking powder, you’ll need about 3 tablespoons plus 1 heaping teaspoon of sugar (50 grams), 3/4 cup of flour (about 100 grams) and a heaping 1/3 cup of chocolate chips (about 60 grams). I also added a pinch of salt.

I blitzed these ingredients in the food processor for about 30 seconds and prepared to fuss with the batter to get it into a cookie shape, but after I dropped 6 scoops onto the parchment, they spread themselves out just fine. In my oven, they needed 10 minutes to brown properly. I worried that they might merge into one unfortunate mega-cookie or stick to the pan like angry limpets in a tide pool, but they puffed up instead of out during baking, and they popped right off the paper after cooling for a few minutes. That parchment or a silicone baking mat is probably critical, but in general, these are self-managing cookies!

Now,  for the best part: tasting! Katja told me that many commenters pointed out that a banana cookie is called a bookie, but those recipes usually contain butter and/or rolled oats and result in a very different texture. These pookies are unique, with a texture that is, true to Kayou Kitchen’s word, midway between a cookie and a pancake. The edge is very lightly crisped, the middle soft, the top just a bit sticky-sweet. It reminds me a bit of a muffin top, but holds together better.

They hold up to dunking surprisingly well — better than some cookies — and since there is less oil than a standard pancake, they don’t flop around when handheld. I think they taste best at room temperature or warm, but one minute in the toaster oven made them perfect for dipping again the next morning. You could easily sub in nuts or add a little dried fruit, and kids could make them with very little assistance.

They could also eat them in the car without getting syrup in the seatbelts.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com