Cookies

Zachary Whittier
Sep 6, 2018 · 7 min read

Final Idea + Recipe

Chocolate Drizzled Strawberry Cheesecake Cookie

Here I’ve made a play off of strawberry cheesecake. I started with baking graham cracker cookies to mimic the crust of strawberry cheesecake. Then I used cream cheese frosting for the filling. Then topped each cookie with fresh strawberries, drizzled with milk chocolate and then sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs. I feel like this idea is creative, because there are some strawberry shortcake cookies already, but they’re pink and they don’t really feel like an actual cake. I feel this one actually gives the experience of eating a mini personal cheesecake.

1 1/4 cups finely crushed graham cracker crumbs

1/2 cup of butter

3/4 cups brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

1 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups flour

12 strawberries (stem removed)

cream cheese frosting

7 oz melting chocolate

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Mix the butter, sugar and brown sugar in large bowl until creamy.
  3. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated
  4. In second bowl, mix graham cracker crumbs, flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.
  5. Add the dry mixture to the wet and stir until soft dough is formed.

6. Form 1 1/2-inch balls, and then flatten into about 1/4 inch think patties

7. Bake cookies for about 10 minutes. (Don’t let edges get too brown or the cookie will be too crunchy)

8. While the cookies are baking, quarter 12 strawberries and place onto paper towel to dry off excess juice.

9. After cookies are done, let them cool completely, then pipe out cream cheese frosting on to each.

10. Place 4 quarters of a strawberry on each cookie, in a star shape.

11. Melt the chocolate, then drizzle as much as desired on top of cookies.

12. Top with more crumbled graham cracker. Place in fridge for chocolate to set.

Idea Generation

I took many ideas from all sorts of resources, such as TV, the grocery stores, and even candles. I just brainstormed ideas from floral cookies to classic flavor combinations. the main criteria for me when deciding was have I heard of this cookie before and would I want to eat it.

Idea 1 Test

Grape Galaxy Cookie

This idea started as just grape cookies, and I never meant to put real grapes in here just the artificial grape flavor, so i looked to grape Kool-aid but that was already done so I wanted to up the novelty factor. So i start with full tube of pre-made sugar cookie dough and mixed 1/2 of grape Kool-aid mix.

I wasn’t getting the bright purple color i was going for so i added food coloring to it. Using 5 drops of blue and 1 of red the dough resulted in this color.

I wanted to see how the added Kool-Aid sugar affected the dough so I baked a couple. The flavor was good, it wasn’t an overpowering fake grape, but, the cookies were hard around the edges and gooey on the inside from the extra sugar. However, I knew if I added the other dough to the cookies it would even out.

So I divided the second tube of sugar cookie dough into three bowls, and added 3 green + 1 yellow drops of food coloring to one, 3 red + 1 blue to another, and 4 blue to the last, for green, pink, and blue colors respectively.

I didn’t like the colors of the pink and blue so I doubled both of the drops of those.

Final colors of dough.

Multiple unsuccessful attempts at mixing the colors.

Final Idea on how to mix the colors. I rolled out the purple base on the cookie, then I randomly added strips of the other colors on top. After doing this I rolled it up and stretched it and then cut the tube into 6 1-inch balls

I baked these at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. I thought they turned out really well. the grape flavor was still there. The texture was fluffy. I wish the colors were more vibrant, but the browning of the cookie kinda washes that out, so there’s not much that can be done to change that. This was one of my main reasons for not going forward with this idea.

Idea 2 Test

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cheesecake Cookie

My first cookie idea was kinda inspired by the peanut butter kiss cookie. My first idea was to make a s’mores cookie. Which is where the idea of a graham cracker cookie came from. Then I thought, what if that was a chocolate covered strawberry? and I just keep building off of that. Instead of marshmallow, I used cream cheese frosting.

I tried multiple variations to determine the best placement using whole, halved, or quartered strawberries. At first glance, these cookies don’t look too spectacular.

Until you cut them in half.

And I tried cutting them into forth since we’d be doing that for grading and I found out they were way too messy but the flavor was good.

I knew I wanted the graham cracker cookie to be thinner because even though it is a cookie it overpowered the rest of the ingredients. I chose this cookie to more forward with, because one it was more fun to bake and it was just more enjoyable to eat.

Iteration

I made multiple iterations to each idea. Here are the iterations of the Chocolate Drizzled Strawberry Cheesecake Cookie.

Originally started with balls of dough which result in these cookies, which didn’t allow for many toppings. So I opted for flatter cookies

These still were too think and the ration of cookie to toppings was still off.

I orignally started by dipping the strawberries in chocolate, but then taking in the idea that we were going to cut these into fourths, i decided the strawberries should be cut more as if they would be put on a cheesecake.

Here I tried different variations of placement of strawberries.

Here I tested out drizzling chocolate over the cookie, which visually looked more stunning.

Had the epiphany of garnishing with graham cracker crumbs.

Timeline

9/4 Tuesday: Start Brainstorming Ideas. (idea generation)

9/5 Wednesday: Finish Outline. Continue brainstorming.

9/6 Thursday: Finish brain storming. Finalize 2 best ideas. Get required ingredients. (idea test 1, idea test 2)

9/7 Friday: Bake first iteration of each cookie. Take pictures. Get feedback from friends. (iteration 1)

9/10 Saturday: Bake second iteration with improvements to each. Take pictures. (iteration 2)

9/11 Sunday: Decide between the two. Record the recipe. Grab any necessary ingredients. (final idea + recipe)

9/12 Monday:

9/13 Tuesday: Bake Final iteration of cookie. Take pictures. Write up blog

9/14 Wednesday: Finalize blog.

9/15 Thursday: Bring cookies to class.

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