cookies
Final Idea + Recipe

Ingredients:
Dough
- 1 cup white flour
- 1 cup cake flour
- ½ cup mashed potatoes, unseasoned
- 1½ teaspoon salt
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ cup butter
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 6 tablespoons Irish whiskey
- 1 tablespoon coffee liqueur
Coffee Sugar
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon espresso powder
- ¼ teaspoon coffee liqueur
Directions:
Dough
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, mashed potatoes, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside.
- Using a mixer, cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla, whiskey, and coffee liqueur.
- With the mixer on low, slowly add in the dry ingredients. Mix until incorporated.
Coffee Sugar
- Combine sugar, coffee liqueur, and espresso powder together. Mixture should be clumpy, but with not liquidy
Cookie
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Place enough dough for half a cookie on the pan.
- Put a small amount of coffee sugar on the dough. Cover with the rest of the dough for one cookie.
- Repeat for the rest of the pan, placing cookies about 2 inches apart.
- Bake for 12 minutes. Let the cookies cool for a minute before removing them from the pan
Idea Generation

My ideation process began when I saw an example of a cookie that included beer on the first class’ slide show. I really liked the idea of including some sort of alcohol in my cookies, and since my favourite drink is Bourbon, that is the liquor I chose to focus on.
With that starting-off point, I started to think about possible novel ingredient combinations that would still taste good. After a while of coming up with some gross-sounding ideas, I looked at what snacks I had in my apartment and decided that pistachios might pair well.
My second idea came to my while I was waiting in line at a Starbucks. It was a long line so I started thinking about cookie ideas, and my thoughts drifted to Irish coffee — coffee with a splash of whiskey in it. I was immediately taken with this idea, but I finally decided to try this one when, during my research, I found a recipe that included mashed potatoes as a substitute for some flour. This brought about my second idea — an Irish coffee and potato cookie.

Idea Test 1 — Bourbon & Pistachio

My procedure for this idea was based on a recipe for pistachio and chocolate cookies that I got from an aunt. After trying Bourbon, pistachio, and chocolate together to make sure the flavours mixed well, I started on the cookies. The recipe was for a more classic chocolate chip kind of cookie, with a couple tablespoons of Bourbon and 3/4 cup of pistachios added in.
The dough had a good, strong Bourbon flavour, which unfortunately faded after baking. The pistachio added a nice bit of saltiness, but the chocolate was unexpectedly strong, overwhelming both the pistachio and the Bourbon.

Idea Test 2 — Irish Coffee & Potato

This dough recipe was less well-defined than the Bourbon & Pistachio dough. I knew that I wanted to add in mashed potatoes, but was really unsure of the necessary proportion of mashed potato to flour, or how much flour or potato would be needed to offset the extra liquid added by the liquor. After some googling of potato cookie recipes didn’t reveal any helpful advice, I just used the same basic recipe as the Bourbon & Pistachio cookies, substituting half a cup of potato into the recipe and adjusting from there.
I also really wanted the whiskey flavour to come through in these cookies, so I started off with two tablespoons of whiskey and one tablespoon of coffee liqueur.
To get a strong coffee flavour, I combined some of the coffee liqueur with granulated sugar and instant espresso powder and sprinkled it on top of the cookie just before baking it.
It was hard to taste the whiskey in this cookie, and the coffee taste unfortunately was not as strong as I wanted it to be, but it was a good starting place.

Iteration
After both idea tests, I decided that the Irish Coffee & Potato cookie was just as tasty as the Bourbon & Pistachio cookie, but much more novel and with a lot more opportunity for creativity in the application of the coffee sugar.
I made small batches of cookies, each with a few different possible iterations of the Irish Coffee & Potato cookie. I tried one coated with unflavoured granulated sugar and a little coffee sugar placed on top, but it was too sweet, and the whiskey and coffee flavours were too weak. I also tried a coffee sugar-coated cookie (stuck to the pan, not enough whiskey flavour), a cookie with a drop of espresso powder-filled dough on top (couldn’t taste any coffee), a coffee liqueur-filled divet in the cookie ( liquor didn’t fully evaporate during baking), and one with espresso powder just sprinkled on top (blunt and much too bitter).

After taste-testing all of the variants with my mom, dad, and brother, I decided to make a final batch that had some coffee sugar in the center of the dough. In this variant, the whiskey flavour of the dough and the coffee flavour of the sugar can both be tasted, neither overwhelming the other. I also added in more whiskey to the dough to make sure that flavour really came through.

