Cookies
Final Idea + Recipe
Seaweed Ginger Cookies
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 stick butter
- 4–5 Annie Chun’s organic seaweed
- 2 tsp baking soda
Spread dough into 1/2 inch balls, evenly dispersed onto cookie sheet. Cook at 350*F for 15 minutes.
Idea Generation
When starting the idea generation process, my first step was to pose questions for myself. “What goes into a cookie?… What defines a cookie?… What’s required when making a cookie?… What makes cookies taste a certain way? Feel a certain way? Smell a certain way?… Do cookies have to be sweet? Can they be salty?” My goal with these questions was to build a foundation on attempting to define the problem, which in this was “what will I bake.” Now that I had questions ready to fire, I set out on research. My research involved a few articles on the science of cookies, Such as help from NPR and a TedEd video (Stephen Warrens The chemistry of a cookie). Much of my research consisted of what would end up making a chewy vs. crunchy cookies, the difference between cold and melted butter, how to make fluffier cookies, and so on. Once I felt I exhausted my research process, I stopped, and asked myself “What do I like?” From a design perspective, this is very selfish to only be thinking of myself, but at the end of the day I wanted to make a cookie I would enjoy eating. I brain vomited into two categories, sweet and salty. When thinking of making obscure cookies, my mind traveled to all the lays chip combos (like Thai + sweet chili and fried pickles + ranch), and realized that if whack flavor combos work in potato chips, it wouldn’t hurt to try with cookies.


After spilling out all the sweet and salty things I enjoy eating, I felt determined to make a salty cookie, hopefully with an odd combination. I did some more research on salty cookies, looking to find information on what makes the baking process different when dealing with salts rather than sweets. Here is some of that research, including an an early stage recipe. Eventually I narrowed down the cookies into potential prototypes:
Seaweed
Celery Salt
Mustard
Combos
French Onion Dip
Hot Sauce
Jalapeno
Chive
Ginger
Pretzel
Many of these cookies unsurprisingly already exist, so I threw together six flavors with the best potential and paired them into 5 flavor combinations: Celery salt + Mustard (like a Chicago Hot Dog), Celery salt + Seaweed, Hot Sauce + Ranch, Hot Sauce + Chives, Ginger + Seaweed.

With these five narrowed salty ideas, I surveyed 15 freshman students on which combination sounded the best

The results were overwhelming with hot sauce + ranch, followed furthley by ginger + seaweed.
Flaws in the survey: Only 15 responders, did not specify that this would be a cookie (which isn’t a terrible thing), most people were confused with what celery salt was.
This was the last step within my Idea Generation phase, so I was ready to move onto prototyping cookies.
Idea Test 1
Frank’s Red Hot sauce + Hidden Valley Ranch
Recipe used (influenced from both salty cookies and hot sauce cookies):
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 tbsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp Ranch powder (replaced salt)
- a few dashes of Hot sauce (whatever seemed to smell strong enough)
- 1/2 stick of unsalted butter
- 1/2 packed brown sugar
- 1 egg
Key notes during process:
- I think I put in way too much flour.
- Did not even really attempt to melt butter.
- Ranch gave off unpleasant smell.
- Dough was actually way too liquid-y, probably didn’t actually put enough flour in.
- 10 min into baking, it’s now a cookie cake.
- 2 people stated “it really does not smell good in here” when sitting in the kitchen during baking.
- Eating experience was as follows: Tasted like nothing, tasted bad, tasted like nothing again, then tasted terrible.




Final Verdict: Needed much more hot sauce than expected, and maybe less ranch. The ranch is definitely what killed the flavor, making the cookies extremely unpleasant. I think it’s time to move on from this idea.
Idea Test 2
I jumped straight to the seaweed ginger cookies next, knowing that both ginger cookies are tasty, and from research, that seaweed cookies are tasty as well. (There are no recipes, history, or information for seaweed and ginger cookies, though. There is one recipe for seaweed cookies that uses ginger, but the end product has very little emphasis on ginger, whereas my recipe has more focus on ginger).
Before I started though, I took note of a few things I did wrong with my first batch, and what I need to do better/differently.
- Actually melt the butter this time when making dough.
- Be confident and aware of dough consistency. Add more flour as necessary.
- Actually spread the cookies out in the pan so you do not end up with a gross cookie cake.
- Consistent size in dough balls.
- Pay more attention to when the cookies are done baking.
My recipe was largely based off ordinary chewy ginger cookies, minus many fancy ingredients because time, money, and access to ingredients were all restrictions. I also made slight adjustments due to the addition of seaweed.
Seaweed ginger cookies
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tbsp ground ginger (used ground ginger from a squeeze bottle)
- 2 cups flour
- 1 stick unsalted butter
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 2 square pieces of Annie Chun’s organic seaweed (cut into chocolate chip sized squares)
- Cook at 350*F for 15 min (or until noticeably ready based on smell/looks)
This batch went well. Surprisingly well according to my friends. Here were some of their thoughts:
- “They’re pretty good”
- “I’m actually really surprised these turned out well”
- “Can I make more with you?”
Things to improve for next batch:
- More more more seaweed. Seaweed was only noticeable in a few cookies.
- Might have to make adjustments for the chewiness of cookies (although the texture was better after putting them in the fridge for a few hours).
- Make balls of dough more even so cookies bake at consistent level.
Process photos on first batch:



Iteration
Iteration and changes to final recipe were as followed:
- 2 cups flour -> 2 1/2 cups flour
- 2 pieces seaweed -> 4 pieces seaweed
- Make all dough balls 1/2 inch
Timeline

