This recipe was loosely inspired by a Nanaimo bar, which is a Canadian dessert featuring a chocolate-nuts-coconut water base, a custard layer, and a chocolate layer, all set into neat little chocolate bars. They are very rich, but they kind of remind me of like a Boston cream pie conceptually(at least in the sense of chocolate and custard, but the coconut and nuts add some fun textural contrasts that make it interesting to play around with). A bunch of the recipes I looked up use almonds for their nut of choice, but since I was going with a brown butter cookie base, I wanted to use pecans, because I love the flavor of brown butter-toasted pecans(yeah, technically I can do almonds too, but I just wanted to use pecans, so sue me). To get the custard component in there, I went with a salted duck egg pastry cream that I frozen into little half spheres and baked those into the centers of my brown butter and Nanaimo bar ingredient-studded cookie dough, just to pay full homage to the ingredients of a Nanaimo bar without having to outright make one(I just wanted to experiment more with stuffed cookies). The usage of salted duck egg might sound really out-there and weird(which whatever), but it comes from me loving the combination of salted duck egg with sugar, and that salinity plays off of the chocolate, coconut, and pecan all so beautifully.

Makes 16 cookies:
For the salted duck egg custard:
1/4 cup whole milk
1 salted duck egg yolk
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a blender, puree the whole milk with the duck egg yolk first. Then pour the liquid into a pot and bring up to a simmer on low heat. In another bowl, whisk together the egg yolk, cornstarch, and sugar. Pour half of the duck egg milk over that while whisking. Then add that, plus the butter, back into the pot and whisk on medium heat until it begins to thicken. Pass everything through a sieve to remove any lumps and mix in the vanilla extract. Pour the custard into 1/4-inch silicone half sphere molds and freeze solid, at least 2 hours.

For the brown butter-coconut-pecan-chip cookie dough:
2oz unsalted butter, browned
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup coconut flakes
2 tbsp cacao nibs
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

In a pan, toast off the brown butter, pecans, coconut flakes, and cacao nibs for 1 minute, or until the coconut is browned. Transfer to a bowl and mix into that the salt and brown sugar first. Then add in the vanilla and egg, and make sure that the bowl is not too warm at this point. Fold into that the remaining ingredients to form your cookie dough. Scoop the cookie into 16 pieces and roll each cookie dough ball around the frozen solid custards. Place each cookie 2 inches apart on a lined sheet tray and bake at 350 degrees F for 12 minutes.