Cookies
Final Idea:
White Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake Cookie Cup with Blackberry Jam

This cookie is a white chocolate chip cookie cup with the center hollowed out and filled with blackberry jam. A drop or two of lime juice is added to balance the sweetness of the cookie and is finally topped with half of a strawberry.
I thought this idea was creative because although cookie cups have already been invented, I feel there is still a lot of unexplored cookie cup recipes. In addition, fruits aren’t incredibly common in cookies, especially strawberries or blackberries. To expand on that, white chocolate pairs well with both fruits. This isn’t a combination I have seen before.
Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup softened butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup white chocolate chips
Mini muffin tin
Cooking spray
Blackberry jam
Strawberries
Lime juice
Directions:
- Preheat oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Mix butter, brown sugar, and white sugar in a bowl.
- Add eggs, almond and vanilla extra, baking soda, and salt. Mix.
- Slowly add flour while mixing the dough.
- Mix in white chocolate chips.
- Generously spray the inside of the muffin tin with cooking spray and fill each well about half way with cookie dough.
- Cook for 10 minutes.
- Allow cookies to cool and with a spoon, hollow out the inside of each cookie taking care not to break the cookie.
- Add a spoonful of blackberry jam to the cavity in each cookie.
- Cut strawberries in half as shown at the bottom of the recipe.
- Like coring an apple, core out the stem of the strawberry with a knife so that the stem fits snugly on the top of the strawberry but if someone were to tug on it, the stem would easily be removed.
- Add a few drops on lime juice to the cavity of the cookie and then top with strawberry half.
- Enjoy.

Idea Generation
Below are pictures of my idea generation notes. The day I got this assignment, I sat down with a friend and just brainstormed some initial ideas (photo directly below) these focused a lot on flavor combinations. One of my favorite ideas was a brownie cookie cup with whipped cream and raspberry filing. This was inspired from one of my absolute favorite deserts to make: brownies with white chocolate whipped cream and raspberry preserves. As someone who enjoys exercising and weightlifting a lot, my second inspiration was to create a chocolate pistachio protein cookie with peanut butter frosting in an attempt to create a healthy protein packed treat.

After having a few days to think about this assignment, I sat down and created ten concrete ideas for my cookie. These are the three photos shown below.



My final two cookies I decided to test were a chocolate pistachio protein cookie with whey frosting and a white chocolate chip cookie cup with blackberry jam and strawberry. Unfortunately, my chocolate cookie cup with whipped cream and raspberry already existed in a different from. After doing some more thinking, I decided on using white chocolate, blackberry, and strawberry.
Idea Test 1: Chocolate Pistachio Protein Cookie with Whey Frosting
As someone who loves fitness and weightlifting, my first idea was to create a high protein cookie that actually tasted good. My friend gave me the idea of a pistachio and chocolate flavor paring and after finding a recipe online for a whey protein cookie I decided to give it a shot.

Depicted above is all the ingredients used in this cookie recipe. These ingredients were: whey protein powder, a banana, eggs, vanilla extract, cocoa powder, flour, peanut butter, honey and pistachios.

The oddest thing about this recipe was how sticky the dough was. If you twiddled some dough through your fingers, you’d need to wash your hands afterwards. To remedy this, I tried adding about four more tablespoons of flour. Even after that, there was barely any change in how sticky these cookies were. Trying to place the dough on a cookie sheet proved to be a pretty sticky challenge.

Turns out that adding that extra flour was a mistake. After cooling for a few minutes, the cookies were hard as rocks. I was nervous that adding three tablespoons of cocoa powder wouldn’t be enough for a good flavor, but they do look chocolatey! Although maybe a little unappetizing…

The icing was another recipe I found online that was a simple combination of whey protein powder, a few tablespoons of evaporated milk, and a tablespoon of powdered sugar.

This initial recipe was kinda odd. The mixture was very runny and had a very strong protein powder flavor. I tried adding about two more tablespoons of powder sugar for improved taste and consistency. The picture above is the icing after adding this extra sugar and although it did thicken, it was still quite runny. The sugar did help a lot with flavor though and transformed the whey taste into a sort of malt flavor.

While the end result was a little lackluster in the looks department, I was pleasantly surprised by the taste. Although the cookie was hard and dry, it tasted like fudge quite a bit. In addition, the icing was a good pairing with the chocolate flavor and it helped balance out the dryness of the cookie. If I had to do this recipe again, I would follow the cookie recipe and add the right amount of flour because these cookies did involve a lot more chewing than I prefer. In addition, I would add more powdered sugar to the icing to make it sweeter.
Idea Test 2: White Chocolate Cookie Cup with Blackberry Jam and Strawberry
My initial plan for test #2 was to create a cookie version of my favorite desert to make: brownies with white chocolate whipped cream and raspberry preserves. I really liked the idea of using a cookie cup because I could conveniently fill the inside with whipped cream and raspberry. However, after doing some research online, I found that similar ideas had already been done.
To build off from this, I decided to keep the white chocolate flavor but instead use them as a white chocolate chip cookie. From my research, I found that blackberry and strawberry are both highly recommended pairings with white chocolate. And thus, this cookie was born.

Above is a picture of all the ingredients used in this cookie. It’s the same ingredients as the recipe towards the top of this journal, but for simplicity sake, these ingredients are: butter, white sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, eggs, salt, almond extract, vanilla extract, and white chocolate chips.

Here is a picture of the dough I made. Not much to say here except it looks delicious!

When preparing the muffin tins with the cookie dough, I decided to test the recipe with a large muffin tin and a small muffin tin. The idea was that the cookies would be the size of a small muffin, but I wasn’t sure how much the cookie dough would expand so I made a couple larger cookies just to be safe.

After baking, my fears became true with the small cookies practically filing the entirety of the muffin tins. However they were fully cooked through and retained the shape of the muffin tin! The large cookies still retained the well in the center, however they were a little under cooked. Plus those would be big cookies to eat!

I found a really quick fix for the small cookies by using a spoon to dig out the center of each cookie.

Here are the filling and topping. Blackberry jam and strawberries. Nice and simple.

Picture of cookie with blackberry jam added to the center.

The photo above is the completed cookie with a strawberry half added to the top! This cookie tasted quite a bit like strawberry short cake with a nice crumbly texture and because it was so tasty, I decided to use it as my final idea. My biggest criticisms were the cookie was maybe a little too sweet and there needed to be a method to easily remove the stem.
From this test I learned that white chocolate does goes extremely well with blackberry and strawberry and that hollowing out a cookie in a muffin tin is the best way to make a cookie cup.
Iteration
Although I was very pleased with my strawberry shortcake cookie cup, there’s always room for improvement.
My first idea was to add some lime juice to the blackberry jam. This cookie was maybe a little too sweet, and adding just a little sourness could help balance out everything.

It was tricky adding just a drop of lime juice to the jam but it did help balance out the flavor. As long as there wasn’t too much juice added, the cookies had a more mild and enjoyable sweetness. After this test, I would recommend adding it too the cookies.
Although I did love having the strawberry stem on the cookie, it was a little bothersome to eat since the stem had to be removed. To fix this, I cored out the stem of each strawberry so that a quick pluck would remove the stem from the cookie. I was surprised by how well this worked in practice and managed to add a nice touch to my cookies. It was a quick process as well. All I had to do was cut around the core of the strawberry, maybe four or five cuts, and my work was done.

Timeline
Tuesday (9/4/2018) — Create blog post and timeline. Being research and idea generation.
Wednesday (9/5/2018) — Continue research and idea generation. Come up with at least ten ideas.
Thursday (9/6/2018) — Finish research and idea generation. Narrow down to two or three cookie ideas.
Saturday (9/8/2018) — Purchase ingredients and create prototypes of cookies for two best ideas.
Sunday (9/9/2018) — Gather feedback from friends and improve on a single recipe. Baking several times, with feedback and necessary changes between each iteration.
Monday (9/10/2018) — Test bake final iteration of cookies if not complete on Sunday. This is to ensure the recipe is good, and make any small adjustments that might need to be made. Begin writing blog posts.
Tuesday (9/11/2018) — Complete blog posts and documentation of process.
Wednesday (9/12/2018) — Bake final batch of cookies for class, ideally no changes should be made for the recipe. Submit blog post if not done before.
