Cookies
“The Banana Juicy Lucy”
— Final Idea + Recipe — The final idea is to make a “juicy lucy” peanut butter cookie that is filled with banana and topped with chocolate chips. I feel that this idea is creative because it takes two influential foods from my childhood, the banana boat and the juicy lucy burger, and blends them together to make an unmatched flavor.

You will need:
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 3/4 cups of flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- Mix butter, peanut butter, white sugar, brown sugar, in a bowl and proceed to beat in eggs.
- In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda, then stir into butter/sugar mixture. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Roll dough into ~3/4 inch ball and flatten into a circle on the pan, arrange 3 thinly sliced banana chips onto the circle, cover with another patty about the same size, and finally, push 4 chocolate chips into the top, pointy end first, in a triangle shape.
— Idea Generation — I started my idea generation with my dad’s juicy lucy burgers because it was one of our staple dinners back at home. From there, I thought a cookie filled with some sort of pie filling or jelly would be good, but cookies like it have already been made. From there, I thought about my lack of fruit and vegetable intake this last week, so I thought a cookie with fruit in it would be good. The first combination I thought would be good was peanut butter and banana, but I wanted to deviate from the shape of an original cookie, so I thought about coating bananas in the cookie dough. From here, I thought about banana boats I would make as a kid, so I decided to try to hollow out the center of the banana, where the seeds are, and put chocolate there. My second idea also builds off of my lack of fruit intake and also plays with the usual shape of the cookie. I’ve always liked blueberries and peanut butter, so I plan to wrap blueberries in the same peanut butter dough, but instead of adding them like you would M&Ms to a chocolate chip cookie, I will bake bite-sized cookies.


— Idea Test 1 — The banana-peanut butter-chocolate cookie. The original concept was to stray from the normal shape of a cookie by cutting the banana in half both length and width wise, then hollowing out the banana where the seeds are, and placing chocolate chips in the crevice and proceeding to wrap this in cookie dough. This proved to be a failure because the dough was tough to get to stick to the banana and it drooped down the banana when in the cooking process. I attempted to mend this by placing small strips on both top and bottom so that they would expand outward and I would have a perfectly wrapped banana slice, but it was messy and not aesthetically pleasing at all.

The flavor, however, was very good, so I switched gears back to a regular cookie shape and decided to lay one flat, thin patty down, put three banana slices on top of it, put another thin, flat patty on top of that, and then put three chocolate chips on top. This stayed true to my juicy lucy inspiration and proved to be much less messy and a much better option overall.

— Idea Test 2 — My second idea, blueberries wrapped in peanut butter cookie dough, was much shorter lived. They were very simple to make and were very convenient because they were small and could be eaten in one bite. I tried one and liked it, but my colleagues who were helping me taste test were not so impressed and because product design, unlike art, must appeal to the consumer and not self, I decided to ditch the idea and move on with my banana idea.
— Iteration — The final iteration, the banana cookie, only has some slight changes from the “Juicy Lucy” style that was decided upon. The bananas were sliced thinner because having them too thick prevents the patty on top from sagging down and covering them fully so there was exposed banana. We decided to make the patties slightly smaller because the cookie was becoming too large. Finally, I stuck the chocolate chips in with the pointy side going into the cookie because having the flat side on top of the cookie was causing the chocolate chips to slide down and almost completely off of the cookie.



Timeline
- Tuesday 9/4/18: Make blog post containing an outline of the project and project timeline.
- Thursday 9/6/18: Secure two good ideas for cookies to try and get ingredients.
- By Saturday 9/8/18: Bake one of each cookie and taste test both. Make recipe adjustments as necessary.
- Sunday 9/9/18: Bake a final cookie and make any adjustments as necessary. If it is determined that it will be the final cookie, take pictures for the blog.
- Monday-Tuesday 9/10–11/18: Finish blog post about cookies
- Wednesday 9/12/18: Bake final batch of cookies and store overnight with bread so that they do not become stale.
- Thursday 9/13/18: Present final cookies to class
