Cookies

Outline:

Final Idea + Recipe: For my final idea, I iterated and further developed my cinnamon, rum, and raisin cookie. Instead of just being circular, I wanted to either make it look like a pirate hat, due to the rum, or a leaf because the ingredients brought forth, to me at least, the emotions and feelings of fall. I added walnuts to the list of ingredients because I felt that they would complement the cinnamon and the raisins, plus it would make the ingredients list look like trail mix, which also falls under the fall umbrella. I brainstormed some terms that were directly inspired by fall, by exploring, or by nature. After deliberation, I decided that I liked the name Autumn Trail for my cookies because the decoration looks a little like a trail, the cookie is in the shape of a leaf, the ingredients are symbolic of the fall season, and the cookie as a whole is just a representation of autumn. I feel like this cookie is creative because it strays away from the typical oatmeal raisin, added more textures and flavors than a typical raisin cookie, and is designed to evoke specific emotions.

Ingredients:

1 cup of brown sugar

1/2 cup of white sugar

1 bar of crisco

2 eggs

1 & 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla

1/4 cup of dark rum

2 & 1/2 cups of flour

1/3 cup of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 & 1/2 teaspoons of salt

Handful of halved cashews

Handful Raisins

Recipe: Add the brown sugar, white sugar, and crisco into a mixing bowl and stir together until completely and evenly mixed.

It will have a grainy, almost velvety texture.

Add the eggs, the vanilla, and the rum to the mixture and stir until mixed thoroughly.

Add the flour (make indentation at the top of the flour for salt and baking soda), the cinnamon, the baking soda, and the salt. In the indentation, mix the salt and the baking soda together and then throughout the flour and cinnamon.

Keep stirring until all the ingredients are mixed and the dough is even. It should be a medium shade of brown.

Next, flatten the dough on a counter or flat surface, roll the dough out, and cut leaves out of the dough.

Once cut, place on a baking sheet and add the cashews to the center and have the raisins branching out from the cashew datum. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Idea Generation

My idea generations developed from two core fundamental ideas that I had for what I wanted my final cookie to turn out like. First, I knew that I wanted to be able to successfully incorporate alcohol into my cookie and not have it turn out disgusting because of the alcohol; I wanted the alcohol to add a note and flavor that I would not have been able to achieve otherwise.

Second, I knew that I wanted my cookie to have a unique shape or interior design. My ideas mostly centered around possible successful flavor combinations that would be unique to me and then what design would complement the ingredients in the cookie.

Idea Test 1

The first idea that I had was for a spicy chocolate, tequila, and banana cookie. I got that idea because I knew that spicy chocolate was good, chocolate and banana were good together, but I wanted to explore a more unique route. I knew that spicy chocolate had Mexican origins, so I thought that if I were to add a little tequila, then that might take the cookie to the next level. I knew that I wanted the cookie itself to be a spiral design, with a light batter that is the unspicy, plain banana & tequila dough,

and then a dark dough swirled inside of that that contained the spicy chocolate dough.

When I made these cookies, they tasted good and you could tell that there was spice in them, but their overall look was not great. When I went to try and get the spiral design for them, I did not let the batter cool enough to the point where manipulation of the dough via swirling would have been a clean & easy act. I still used the relatively warm dough, which did not spiral as well as cooled dough would have.

The cookies themselves were larger than I was used too, so I had to cook them longer, but I wasn’t sure how much, so they ended up cooking more than I would have liked and ended up being too crispy for my liking.

I learned that this cookie would take more work than I had thought and was not used to all of the baking methods that were required of me, so I decided to try a second idea.

Idea Test 2

For my second idea, it came directly from my first idea, along a train of thought that I called the “Booze theme.” I picked rum because I knew that was a fairly common alcohol that is used for cooking and baking purposes, and then I thought about some ingredients and flavor combinations that could go with that. Cinnamon and raisin flavors can already be traced or noted in the flavor of rum, so I figured those would be perfect. I wanted to try developing the flavors before getting on to the shapes that I wanted, so the shape of this iteration was just a regular, circular cookie shape. These cookies turned out fantastic, both in terms of taste and overall appearance. I knew that they could be improved, thought, so I knew that while I would keep following this string of inspiration for my final iteration, I would need to make some changes. I learned that this would be a good source and starting point for developing my final recipe and cookie.

Iteration

After my initial two cookie ideas, I decided that I would further explore my second idea, the cinnamon, rum, and raisin cookie. I knew that I wanted the shape of the cookie itself to look like either a pirate hat or a leaf because rum is synonymous with pirates and the ingredients and overall flavor would end up tasting like fall and autumn, hence the leaf. Deciding on a shape that would best convey the message and emotions that were tied up in the ingredients was important, and I felt that the leaf would best to justice to the ingredients and the feelings of fall that I was attempting to invoke in people who tasted my cookie. I came up with five different shapes of leaves that I would pick one from and initially I picked a fairly complex shape.

Then I had to determine whether I wanted to have my raisins and newly added cashews mixed into the batter or added on top of the dough before baking. I drew up some designs and determined that I liked the look of the cookies with the raisins and cashews added on top of the cookie because it looked more like a leaf than the other design did. When it came time to cut my leaves out of the dough, I immediately decided to move away from the complex design that I had picked previously and chose a much simpler leaf design. This allowed my to be able to cut out the leaves with much more ease, as well as allowing the cookies to cook evenly in the oven and not have the many thin edges burn and crisp faster than the rest of the cookie.

Timeline:

Tuesday 9/4/18: I intend on making the outline and the timeline for this module. I have already started to think of ideas for my new cookie, but haven’t been able to get a new notebook yet, so they will have to wait to be written down until tomorrow.

Wednesday 9/5/18: I will purchase a notebook from the bookstore and begin to generate ideas for my cookie. I’ve baked cookies for my entire life, so I have a base recipe down and will be making more of an incremental change rather than a radical one. I might try to start baking, if I have the time.

Thursday 9/6/18: I will make the cookies for my friends to see how they like them or not. If a majority of them like it, then I think I will stick with that one. if not, then I may decide to change the recipe or make some variations.

Friday 9/7/18: I will continue to generate ideas, perhaps try to pick a final one or two to focus on. I will bake those to see how they turn out and determine which I would like to make my final cookie.

Saturday 9/8/18: I will once again make cookies for my friends, to see if they enjoy what will become my final recipe. I will try to make this batch my final recipe or close to my final recipe.

Sunday 9/10/18: I will have a final recipe down and will make those cookies. I will make sure to not leave out any details regarding the recipe, the ingredients, and the process by which I cooked them. I will also try to take pictures of the process and the final result.

Monday 9/11/18: Mondays are my busiest day, so I will try to do as much of my final blog as possible.

Tuesday 9/12/18: I will finish my final blog post and make my last batch of cookies to bring into class on Wednesday.

Wednesday 9/13/18: I will bring my final batch of cookies into lecture and make sure that 6 of them are cut into smaller pieces and that 6 of them are just left alone.

Thursday 9/14/18: I will make sure to upload my final peer review by tonight. I think that we will be reviewing on Wednesday, so I may try to do it that day, but I still have yet to know the exact schedule.

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