Homemade Pocky

Last year’s spectacular New York Times’ cookie spread still leaves an impression on my daughter and I. We chose one of the recipes we hadn’t made before while brainstorming ideas for holiday baking projects. These little sticks were simple to make, delicious to eat, but require some patience.

The recipe is a recreation of the iconic Pocky biscuit stick. My favourite is probably the oddly named Men’s Pocky, which is coated in dark chocolate. While these treats are widely available in Asian grocers, I looked forward to making them at home, as it seemed like a fun project for little hands.

The dough needs a food processor to make, but comes together really easily. I traced out an 8”x5½” rectangle on the back of the parchment, so I would have a guide for rolling. Once we had our dough block, the hardest part was explaining to my 6-year old, that we’d need to wait at least an hour to let the dough firm up.

I used a bench scraper to cut out the little sticks, and then my daughter made quick work of rolling out the little ropes. We spaced them out on parchment lined sheet pans, and then put them in the freezer. More waiting! During this time, we worked on melting the chocolate, and chopping nuts. Pro-tip: sieve the nuts to get rid of tiny crumbs.

After baking the sticks and letting them cool, we finally arrived at the fun part! I put the baked sticks in a glass for easy access. Then, we set up an assembly line to dribble melted chocolate over each Pocky stick, folloed by a sprinkle (or two) of nuts.

We had two kinds of chocolate, both milk and dark. My wife had the great idea of using a fork to drizzle a contrasting chocolate filigree on each dipped stick.

These Pocky were really good, a very close approximation to the store-bought version. Our biscuit was a little less tender, but our coating was way more delicious. Definitely a fun project for a weekend.