Cookies
Final Idea
Sanford Soup Cookies
Tasty both piping hot and cold, these savory soup cookies would be delicious with a bowl of hot soup. They are simple to make, and the recipe works to be made with most kinds of soup.

These “soup cookies” are thus named because they have soup in them, not to mention, they would be delicious with a hot bowl of soup. As I did my research for cookies, I could not find cookies with soup baked into them. Just by looking at these cookies, no one would know there was soup baked into them.
The “Sanford Soup Cookies” are:
Feasible — even a college student with limited resources can get the ingredients required for delicious cookies.
Novel — I could not find anything like them in my research.
Valuable — thus far, everyone who has tried them has liked them, some even coming back for seconds.
Recipe

Idea Generation
Ice cream! This was the very first idea which popped into my mind. I could get ice cream from the dining hall, let it melt, and use the melted ice cream in my cookies! I excitedly searched the idea on Google only to find that about 30,5000,000 results had been found in 0.63 seconds by the search engine. This process repeated itself many times as I thought of more “brilliant” and “unique” ideas.
I wanted to use the resources available to me as a freshman college student, far from home, living in the dorms, and with a meal plan. Every meal-time, I looked around the dining hall for items I could use as a cookie ingredient. Ice cream, chocolate chips, Oreo bits, coconut shavings, granola — all of these were accessible to me via the dining hall, but they are also all very common cookie ingredients.


Eventually, I settled my eye upon the large pots of mouth-watering, hot soup available. This I could bake into a cookie — cookies need not induce a sugar coma. As my second cookie idea, I chose to crumble up colorful Fruit Loop cereal Os and use the crumbs to replace part of my flour. I have seen cereal in cookies before, but the cereal is mixed into the dough whole, much like adding chocolate chips to a recipe.
Idea 1 Test
Crushed Cereal Cookies. The idea here was to replace part of the flour in a normal cookie recipe with crushed up cereal.

Once the recipe was created, I set to baking. At first, the dough was too dry, so I added an egg and 3 tablespoons of water to my original recipe.

By using Fruit Loops as my chosen cereal, little colored flecks made their appearance throughout the dough, giving it a festive look.



The dough for my Crushed Cereal Cookies was on the stiff side and did not lose the “plop” shape they first received when placed onto the cookie sheet. The dough could have used more liquid in it, as well as more sugar, seeing as I forgot to add said sugar to the batch. Despite this, they came out biscuit-like in texture with a slight tinge of sweetness from the sugary cereal.
I learned from this recipe that I had created a base recipe which made fluffy, biscuit cookies. I also learned that the butter helps in giving the cookies a more stereotypical chocolate chip cookie shape — my dough would probably have needed more butter in order to get the same shape.

These Crushed Cereal Cookies came out quite good, however, they came out of the oven looking a bit like, as one of my friends put it, “cement garnished with Fruit Loops.”
Idea 2 Test
Soup Cookies! Who said cookies need to be sweet!?
This idea was driven by my desire not to buy cookie ingredients which I would have absolutely zero [zip, nada] use for after finishing this cookie project. I desperately wanted to use ingredients from the dining hall, but so many of them were just “normal” cookie ingredients — and thus I branched out.
The first time I made the soup cookies, Sanford dining hall has chicken noodle soup, so that is what I used. I did however, exclude the chicken from the cookie dough as I was unsure of the outcome.

As I got to work making the recipe, I realized this too, desperately needed more wet ingredients. Therefore I added butter, soup base, and cut down on the flour.


These cookies also kept their initial, unattractive, “plop” shape. I learned that for this dough it must be flattened into a cookie shape before baking.
Upon keeping the soup cookies sitting out overnight, I discovered that they kept their taste and texture very nicely. They made a pleasant, filling snack the day after baking.

Overall, I enjoyed these more than the Crushed Cereal Cookies. Baking soup into cookies was a success. They came out with the rich flavor of the soup, and a fluffy, biscuit-like texture. However, there was still flavor potential within the recipe for possible additions such as bacon or shredded cheese.
Iteration
For the final “Sanford Soup Cookies,” I had at my disposal a chicken and rice gumbo soup and shredded cheddar cheese.
I was happy with the outcome of the dough for my first attempt at baking the soup cookies, however I wanted to add more flavors and textures. To accomplish this, I nearly doubled the amount of “soup chunks” which I placed into the dough mix and added shredded cheese. I included the chicken from the soup to add texture — unlike in the last, trial bake. Finally, I made sure to shape the dough on the cookie sheet before baking.





The final product came out to be a moist, filling cookie, with a rich flavor — something like a chicken pot pie but with a biscuit crust.

Despite the many remarks questioning the validity of a “soup cookie” and fears for my sanity, these cookies are something to be proud of as the creator. Tasty both piping hot and cold, these savory soup cookies would be delicious with a bowl of hot soup. They are simply made, and the recipe works with most kinds of soup.
Timeline:
9/4: get assignment, begin brainstorming
9/5: post outline and timeline, research basic cookie recipes and ratios, brainstorm cookie combinations
9/6: continue brainstorming, ask friends about their favorite cookies
9/7: make recipe for cookies, write up blog post
9/8: test cookie recipe
9/9: edit cookie recipe, make necessary changes
9/10: write up blog post
9/11: bake cookies
9/12: post blog
