Cookies

Final Idea
For my final idea I created Pudge the Fish. Some people reading this may know what I’m referencing, but for others, I’ll provide a little background:
Pudge the Fish is a fish from the movie Lilo & Stitch. In the opening sequence of the movie, Lilo feeds Pudge the Fish a peanut butter and banana sandwich, so that he will bring good luck. This was the first thing that popped into my head when I created the first iteration of this cookie with just bananas and syrup baked in. After thinking about it for a bit, I realized that bananas, peanut butter, and some chocolate chips, could be great additions to a cookie. The final version turned out to be delicious!
Recipe
Note: This is modified from the Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. It’s the only one I’ve known since I started baking.
Ingredients:
Makes: 5 dozen tablespoon-sized cookies
2 1/4 cups of flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 sticks of softened butter
3/4 cup of sugar
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 bag of chocolate chips
2 bananas, diced
Peanut butter to spread once cooled
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375°F
Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Then, beat the butter, sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl or mixer. Next, add eggs and beat into the mixture. Now, carefully add in the flour mixture a little at a time to avoid making a mess while mixing. Once everything is well mixed, add in the chocolate chips and banana pieces.
Place cookies of your desired size on baking sheet. The recommended size is about one tablespoon.
If the cookies are the recommended size, bake for 9 to 11 minutes. If the cookies are larger or smaller, adjust baking time accordingly.
Let cookies cool for 5 minutes, then spread a thin layer of peanut butter on top.
Cookies are now ready to serve!
Idea Generation
For both of my ideas, I wanted to do something where the flavor is first and foremost. When I think of a cookie, the first things that come to mind are sweet and soft. In my opinion the best cookies practically melt in your mouth. Jumping off from there, I started brainstorming what would be a good accent to those traits, and this is where my first idea started to form.
Often when I think of something that’s sweet but also not candy, I think of fruit. I debated between going with apples and bananas, but ultimately decided on bananas. I also wanted to bake in some maple syrup to add some extra sweetness to the mix. While a bit basic, I believed this to be a good starting point for this recipe.
My second idea was a bit less conventional. As I was trying to figure out what would be interesting — and good — to add to a cookie, I was running through the list of items that I knew I had in my pantry. Being the money-conscious college student that I am, that wasn’t much. However, I did think of one item that I wanted to try: bagels. This one sounded pretty ridiculous, but I thought it had a lot of potential. Through further brainstorming, I decided that I might as well go all the way and add some cream cheese or some sort of deli cheese to the mix to make the perfect breakfast cookie.



Idea 1 Test

For my first test of my banana and syrup cookies, I actually made a split batch. Half of the batch were cookies containing the chopped banana pieces and syrup. The other half only contained the banana pieces. This was to see if the syrup made a difference and if it was any better than just the bananas.


The results were fairly average.
I noticed almost no difference between the two cookie types aside from a little extra crunch from the caramelized syrup. While this did make the texture more interesting, it didn’t improve the cookies in any real way. On the other hand, the bananas became a good accent after baking. Similarly to the syrup, their exterior caramelized a bit, which added a nice little crunch and burst of flavor. Overall, I liked adding the bananas to the cookies quite a bit. This would be the recipe I chose to pursue.

Now that I had confidence in this recipe, I wanted to go further with it. For my next iteration I planned to add peanut butter and chocolate chips. As before, I would do a split batch to cut down on iteration time and get multiple tests done at once. One part would feature all of the ingredients, another would just have the peanut butter added in, and the last would only have the chocolate chips. More details on this version will be in the Iteration section.
Sadly, I could only convince my girlfriend to try my cookies with me. Apparently, none of my roommates trust my experimental cookies.
Idea 2 Test
My second idea was to add chopped bagels and some sort of cheese to the base cookie recipe. This definitely sounded like the more adventurous of the two. Who puts bagels and cheese in a cookie?
I ended up using a cinnamon-raisin bagel and some muenster cheese. Surprisingly, the taste and texture was much less shocking than I expected. Muenster is a very mild cheese, so I knew that it would mostly affect the texture; however, I noticed it even less than expected. A similar thing happened with the bagel pieces. Instead of crisping up like I expected, they stayed mostly soft and blended into the rest of the cookie. All in all this cookie ended up being more underwhelming than I expected, so I did not pick it to iterate on.

Iteration

Since I decided to use the banana-based recipe, I made some changes to make it a bit more flavorful. First and foremost, I added chocolate chips. Chocolate and bananas are a great combo. Their textures and flavors just work.
My other addition was peanut butter on top. While I know that peanut butter cookies exist — and I’ve even tried some — I’ve never made them myself. I almost didn’t use peanut butter this time, but I remembered a scene from Lilo & Stitch where Lilo talks about how Elvis used to eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches. That made up my mind, and the final iteration of my cookie was born.

Outline
Final Idea + Recipe
Idea Generation
Idea 1 Test
Idea 2 Test
Iteration
Timeline
- Thursday 9/6/18: Have the ideas for the cookie recipe finalized by the evening.
- Friday 9/7/18 through Sunday 9/9/18: Test cookie recipes and iterate. Test iterations on my girlfriend and roommates.
- Monday 9/10/18 and Tuesday 9/11/18: Use notes from tests to finalize the recipe and start on final baking.
- Wednesday 9/12/18: Take care of the last of the baking
- Thursday 9/13/18: Bring finished cookies to class!