Cookies

Melody Massard
Sep 5, 2018 · 8 min read

Outline/Timeline

9/4 Tuesday — Write timeline and blog post []

9/5 Wednesday — TIMELINE DUE — Research what creative cookies other’s have made and brainstorm personal ideas, then look up if brainstormed ideas have been done and keep revising have at least 3 do-able ideas []

9/6 Thursday — Choose a bake shop like Insomnia Cookies to visit after class to observe people buying, making, eating cookies and decide on an idea to bake [] — Ended up being: go to Mexican Grocery Stores and taste test various kinds of candy

9/7 Friday — Make recipe for idea 1 and bake it — have others taste and critique, document all process and findings in Idea 1 Test []

9/8 Saturday — Brainstorm ways to make the cookie better, or scratch the idea and plan for baking a new kind of cookie if the idea wasn’t very good []

9/9 Sunday — Make recipe for idea 2 and bake it — have others taste and critique, document all process and findings in Idea 2 Test []

9/10 Monday — Consider ways to improve either the cookie’s look, taste, or texture for the final bake with the input of family and friends who like to bake []

9/11 Tuesday —Complete Iteration portion of blog and consider baking the cookies again with those changes []

9/12 Wednesday —FINAL BLOG POST DUE — Complete Final Idea + Recipe portion of blog and bake final batch of cookies to bring Thursday []

9/13 Thursday — Bring final batch of cookies to class

9/14 Friday — PEER REVIEWS — Complete 2 Peer Reviews

— — — — — — — — —

Idea Generation :

For idea generation, I created a brainstorm list and a mind map of any possible cookie types that already existed that I thought were interesting in either form, flavor or texture and started to add my own ideas that I thought could be interesting.

Throughout my entire brainstorming process, a few of my ideas were:

  1. Zucchini cookies
  2. Vitamin cookies (ew)
  3. Beet cookies
  4. Puppy chow cookie
  5. Mexican candy cookie
  6. Sandwich stroopwafel cookie
  7. Little Debby cake recreated into a cookie
  8. Chinese doughnut cookies
  9. Dulce de leche cookie
  10. Soft marzipan or almond butter cookie
  11. Cereal inspired cookie
  12. Pancake cookies

The most important aspect to this cookie for me was having something that hasn’t been done before and was totally unique… so I didn’t want to be able to find my ideas online. After brainstorming and mind mapping, the two ideas I decided to test were a Mexican Candy Cookie and a Sweet Arepa Cookie

Inspiration to: Spicy Mexican Candy cookies

I started to notice a couple themes, I was expanding to desserts I found interesting and thinking about them in cookie form. Then, I started expanding into international desserts and started thinking about those in cookie form.

Online I found spicy cookies, but never a Mexican candy inspired cookie. Making a cookie taste spicy is one thing, but making it taste like Mexican candy is another. Mexican candy has a lot of salt and chili. I wanted to see if I could make it work, so I decided to take it on as test 1.

Inspiration to: Sweet Arepa cookies

For the second cookie, I wanted to make something very unlike hot Mexican candy, I wanted to make something sweet and warm and comforting. So I used a mind map specifically to get inspiration for this idea.

I started to think about fried candy bars, and I thought about something very traditional I eat in my house, arepas — which are fried corn flour pattys. I wanted to see if I could make a cookie version by making them sweet and covering them in cinnamon and sugar like churros.

Idea 1 Test: Spicy Mexican Candy Cookie

Mexican candy is its entirely own category of candy. Is it very hot and spicy, and candies usually consist of three main ingredients: sugar, salt, and chili.

The spiciness of many of the candies comes from Chamoy or Tamarind.

Chamoy — refers to a mix of spicy sauces generally with pickled fruit

Tamarind — a pod-shaped fruit that tastes very sweet and sour

I decided to visit three different Mexican grocery stores to find as big of a variety of candy that I could. Almost all of them, I had never tried before.

I decided to make some homemade Chamoy and bake it into a cookie and then cover the cookie in Lucas Chamoy to enhance the kick — a powdered candy I found at the store. The cookies turned out tasting very much like Mexican candy, but didn’t mesh well with flour.

The cookies tasted just like many of the tamarind candies I tried, but the texture of the cookie was off. It didn’t feel very good biting into something so bread-like that was sour and spicy.

I decided if I wanted the candies to fit with the idea of a cookie, I would have to choose a sweeter candy to incorporate. That would mean I would want to skip the chamoy sauce entirely (which would also help with the extreme sticky-ness of the dough).

Idea 2 Test: Sweet Arepa Cookie

A very popular food found in many Colombian homes like mine are arepas, which are corn flour patty’s cooked on the stove. I wanted these arepas to be sweet, a similar idea to a Churro or Sopapilla, but Colombian style. To make the inside sweet, I filled the dough with brown sugar.

I then fried the dough so that it would blow up like a balloon on both sides and covered them in cinnamon and sugar.

When completing this idea, I thought the sweetness tasted fine with the corn flour, but I would have been more satisfied had the cookie been more dressed up with powdered sugar and chocolate, and I felt if I did that, it wouldn’t be as unique of an idea any longer, and it would take the focus away from the arepa itself.

Iteration: Enhance the Spicy Mexican Candy Cookie

For the iteration, I decided to work on the spicy cookie because I saw a lot of potential for growth. I wanted to tone down the sourness but I wanted to keep to the spice, so I ended up just scratching the idea of homemade Chamoy entirely. I started to consider a very sweet but spicy candy I had in my pile called Pico. I opened a few packets and discovered that the consistency of the candy was very much like brown sugar.

I had originally thought of just removing the Chamoy powder around the cookie and replacing it with Pico, but I decided to test a cookie recipe that had brown sugar and replacing it with Pico to just test the difference without the Chamoy sauce.

I went back to the store to get an entire bag of the candy and began cutting them open one little packet at a time to get a sufficient amount for about a cup’s worth.

I followed a typical snickerdoodle recipe to keep ratios consistent and because snickerdoodles have cream of tartar to make the cookie a bit tangy and chewy. I replaced the brown sugar with Pico and the cinnamon with pure chili powder.

I began rolling the dough into balls and wanted to test the cookie in a few different coatings. Cookies covered in even more Pico, cookies covered in Lucas Chamoy powder, and cookies covered in my own mixture of sugar and chili powder.

The cookies turned out to be the perfect consistency and texture. I asked nearby candidates to tell me which cookie they liked better, and everyone seemed to agree with the third, the chili sugar coating. (Which is the more yellow colored cookie in the image above). I liked it better too, which surprised me, but the Lucas Chamoy contained too much salt for a cookie, and the Pico just didn’t provide variety enough of flavor to a cookie already filled with itself. I also was pleased to find out that with the sugar and chili cookie, the first bite is sweet, and the hot flavors kick right after.

Final Idea + Recipe

Final Idea: Galletas de Pico

Why I feel this is a creative cookie:

I decided to call the finished product Galletas de Pico (or, Pico Cookies). This idea rooted from the uniqueness of Mexican candy. As far as I could find, this idea has not been done before, but that isn’t why this cookie is good. While these cookie are not as spicy or sour as Mexican candies usually are, it creates a nice bridge between the softness and chewiness of what people are expecting from a cookie (inspired from snickerdoodles) without shocking them with too much. (I tried to keep in mind my midwestern audience). It provides the comforting texture like a cookie should, but still gives that tang and spice to linger in your mouth afterwards, that’s what makes it a good cookie :)

Recipe:

16 tablespoons butter

2 eggs

1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup Pico candy

2/3 cup white sugar

3/4 teaspoon chili powder

1 1/2 tablespoons cream of tartar

2 3/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

Set aside about 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1 teaspoon of chili powder mixed together to coat cookie dough balls.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325°

Mix together all wet ingredients (butter, sugar, pico candy, eggs, and vanilla extract) with an electric mixer until smooth.

In a separate bowl, mix together all dry ingredients (baking soda, salt, chili, cream of tartar, and flour). Then, pour dry ingredients with wet ingredients until it becomes a sticky dough.

Roll the dough into palm-shaped sizes and with the sugar and chili you have set aside, cover the ball of dough in the sugar and place on a pan with parchment paper.

Bake for 13 minutes!

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade