cookies
FINAL IDEA/RECIPE: Even though the mojito cookies sound more interesting, I thought that the jalapeno-cilantro-white-chocolate cookies tasted best, also, because there’s a lot more flavors going on while eating these. The recipe is as follows:
- 3/4 stick unsalted butter (room temperature)
- just under a half cup sugar
- 1/8 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 3/4 tsp. vanilla
- 3/4–1 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp. baking soda
- 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
- 2 handfuls of white chocolate chips
- 2 jalapenos, seeded, diced small
- 1 tbsp. cilantro, cut as small as possible
These cookies are creative, because these cookies have never been made (according to the internet) before. Many people have made jalapeno cookies, but I decided to add cilantro, to get that street taco type of feel, but then add white chocolate chips to totally throw your mouth on a rollercoaster of spicy and sweet. Both the white chocolate chips, and the jalapenos (for most people) are on far sides of their respective spectrums of spiciness and sweetness. So in the end it all evens out. Cilantro is quite strong which is why only one tablespoon is needed.

IDEA GENERATION: When I first began trying to think of creative, never-before-seen cookies, I thought of different kinds of foods that may or may not be a good fit for a cookie. I tried to think of different dishes that have a lot of different things in it, kind of like a salad. A salad contains a main part, such as lettuce, and then adds different things to it to make it taste better. So immediately I thought of soups. The only soup that I thought could work in a cookie would be Pho, the Vietnamese style soup. This contains either a meat or chicken broth with rice noodles, bean sprouts, cilantro, scallions, lime, jalapenos, and basil. I marked that down in my notebook, but I could not think of anything else in that category, and somehow, I brought myself to bar drinks. I started marking down different bar drinks that had enough things in it to make it an interesting cookie, or else I would add something to it. The few drinks that I narrowed down to were a Moscow-Mule cookie, Old-Fashioned cookie, Mojito cookie, and a Margherita cookie. The Mojito cookie got me thinking however, about different types of greens to make as a cookie, which then I came up with a Jalapeno-Watermelon, Cilantro-Lime-Jalapeno, and a Cilantro-Jalapeno-White-Chocolate cookie. Since the two cookies that I eventually test have to be unrelated to each other, I chose to test the Cilantro-Jalapeno-White-Chocolate cookie, and the Mojito cookie, but with some sort of glaze to figured out after the cookies have been made and tested.

IDEA TEST 1: The first test cookie was the mojito cookies. I chose to utilize Bacardi white rum instead of a more strong rum in case the rum was too over powering in the cookies. To give some independence to each cookie I put different amounts of mint and rum into sets of six cookies, as shown by the three rows. The top row consisted of the most mint and the least amount of rum, and the bottom row had the least mint and the most rum. I determined after eating all three types of cookies that the cookies with the most mint and the least rum were best tasting. I learned that its best to try different versions of an idea to make that idea as good as it can be. However, these cookies needed something more like a fruit of some sort to make them more tasteful


IDEA TEST 2: The second cookie I made was the Jalapeno-Cilantro-White-Chocolate cookies. Again, I made three different versions of the cookie as demonstrated by the rows. I put the least amount of jalapenos in the top row and the most in the bottom row. When I tested all three types, I decided that the cookie with the most jalapenos tasted best, but I must add a little more white chocolate chips to even out all the spiciness and the sweetness. I later learned that with decisions comes new additions or subtractions to an idea, no matter if you choose to or not.

ITERATION: With the Jalapeno cookies, as I said before, I put the most jalapenos out of the three cookies in the final cookies baked, which was two, but also added a little more white chocolate chips to give them a little more sweetness. For the mojito cookies, I wanted to put something sweet and fruity on the top. What I originally had planned when brainstorming was a strawberry-basil glaze or puree to go on top of the cookies. However, there was not anything really sweet in the cookies to begin with, so I decided to make a strawberry-basil frosting, but put red food coloring in it so people would not know that basil was in it, so they could be pleasantly surprised. basil was put in a blender to try and match the consistency of the frosting. The two iterations are shown below.


TIMELINE:
Tuesday, 9/4: Begin the blog post and start to think about what I could possibly want to create with a brand new cookie
Wednesday, 9/5: Buy general ingredients for a basic cookie, keep brainstorming with others
Thursday, 9/6: Narrow my ideas down to the two best recipes and acquire the necessities for these to cookie creations
Friday and Saturday, 9/7 and 9/8: Create and bake the two cookies, while perfecting each recipe to make them as great as they can be, TAKE NOTES DURING PROCESS
Sunday, 9/9: Using notes taken during the baking process, bake the final cookie for presentation and take pictures of final product, IF FINAL PRODUCT DOES NOT TURN OUT WELL THE FIRST TIME KEEP TRYING
Monday, 9/10: Post pictures of final cookie to blog
Tuesday, 9/11: Finish anything else from the blog that is important
Wednesday, 9/12: Chill?
Thursday, 9/13: Prepare final cookies for presentation in class