Cookies
Final Idea + Recipe
My idea to create a new cookie is a Chips and Salsa Cookie. I think this is creative because chips and salsa is normally a salty snack and not thought of as a cookie. I also think it is creative because you do not see any cookies that you are supposed to dip. You do have common cookies like Oreo that many dunk in milk, however it is not supposed to be dipped in something.
Recipe:
Cookie:
- 1 cup butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 5 cups flour
- 1–1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup milk
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla.
- In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternatively with the milk.
- Roll the dough out as thin as possible and cut into triangles. Roll the triangles out more to ensure that it is flat. sprinkle with sugar.
- Place the triangles on top of rolled aluminum foil to give the chips a unique shape.
- Bake for 8 minutes, or until golden brown and resembles a chip color. Cool.
Salsa:
- 1 pack of strawberries
- 1 pack of raspberries
- Maroon Food Coloring
- Coconut shavings (dyed green with food coloring)
- Sesame seeds
- Watermelon Margarita Mix (non-alcoholic, 2 tablespoons)
- Sugar (About 2 tsp)
- White Chocolate Pudding Mix (About 2 tsp)
Dice half of the strawberries and puree the rest of the strawberries with the raspberries. Mix the two together and add a speck of maroon food coloring to resemble the color of salsa. Add margarita mix, sugar and white chocolate pudding mix and stir. Add a small amount of coconut shavings and sesame seeds to make the dip resemble salsa.
Idea Generation
When prompted with the task of creating a new cookie, I was overwhelmed. Thinking that there are so many cookies out there, how can I possibly make a new cookie? My first thought was thinking about what makes a cookie, a cookie. Is there someway I can change the definition of a cookie? I instantly thought about texture. I wanted to create a thin waffle cookie, but then I was thinking, that is a common cookie and I could go to the store and purchase one. My next thought was can I make food look like a cookie, but it wouldn’t be a cookie? I did like this idea, however I was concerned that this maybe stretching the limits of cookies. So I flipped it, what if I can make a cookie look like food? I really liked this idea and thought of a few foods that I would be able to do. I continued my idea generation for another hour to see if I would be able to come up with anything else. A few of the ideas, I really liked, but I kept going back to the food related cookies. Towards the end of my idea generation, I thought of a chips and salsa cookie and a ravioli cookie, which I decided to continue with.
Idea 1 Test
The first test idea I wanted to try was the Ravioli Cookie. My thought was to have a deep fried ravioli, with a chocolate chip cookie in the middle. I thought this idea was creative because it incorporates food that almost everyone has had at one point in their life, with cookies. It is also cooked in a non-traditional way for a cookie, thus making it more creative. Lastly, since I am leaving the cookie dough raw, this adds another reason as to why it is creative.
I started with the dough for the outside. I looked up pasta dough, which was eggs, flour, and salt. Since I want my cookie to be sweet, and not pasta dough like. I found a dough recipe on Allrecipes.com for ravioli that I wanted to use. The dough incorporated milk and butter, resulting in a softer, more tender texture for the cookie. I also added sugar to the dough to make it sweeter.
The next step was for the cookie dough middle. I wanted to go traditional and use a chocolate chip cookie dough, with the possibility of switching dough in the future. I used an edible chocolate chip cookie dough that I usually use, and added mini chocolate chips so it will fit inside the ravioli dough. I fried the dough, and it looked good, however the outside was extremely doughy. It was really chewy and the two textures did not match.
I decided to not go forward with this idea as the texture was not the best, nor did the two ideas match. For me, it was a good idea in theory, however I can see why it has not been done before. My neighbors who tasted my two ideas agreed and did not like this cookie at all. They thought the bread was too thick, and dough like.
Idea 2 Test
The second idea I wanted to try was the chips and salsa idea. I loved the idea of making a cookie look like a popular food, and especially a snack. I started with the dough, and found a simple sugar cookie dough. To make the cookie look like a chip, I cut out triangle shapes and layed them on rolls of crinkled aluminum foil. I did this because I didn’t want the chips to look even or uniform, I wanted them all to be different. When baking them, I found that the chips were really good in taste, however they did not look like a chip because they were too thick. Additionally, the color was a little off. This was something that I will need to iterate on. I did try rolling the dough out thinner, and it definitely helped, however it still did not look like a chip.
The next step was making the “salsa.” I wasn’t sure how to start with this, however the initial idea was to make a fruit salsa, so I started with red fruits, which was strawberries and raspberries. I found a red frozen fruit mix that included strawberries and raspberries and thought I would try it! I cut up a few of the strawberries, as well as pureeing a few and the raspberries. I found the mixture to be a little too tart and not the sweet dip I was looking for. I tried to think of things to add to make it less tart, and thought adding sugar and a white chocolate pudding mix would help. This did help a little bit, but it was still a little tart and did not taste quite right. I went to the fridge and found a watermellon margarita drink mix and the mix was perfect! I really enjoyed the flavor, and coupled with the crisp chip, I thought it was perfect!
When my neighbors tried the chips and salsa, they really enjoyed it and wanted to keep eating it! The only complaint that I heard from them was that it did not look like chips and salsa. I knew this was something that I would have to iterate on.
Iteration
For the iteration, I really wanted to work on the look of my product since I am trying to make it look like chips and salsa. The first obstacle was the chips. I decided to try to color the chips to see if adding a yellow or brown food coloring would help make the chips look better. I found that adding the yellow coloring made the chip too yellow, and the brown made the chip look too dark. the coloring was not quite right, and I actually like the original better. I then decided to add a little sugar to the top of the chips to make it look like salt, and decided to cook the chips a little longer. For me, this made all the difference! I really liked how the chips looked after this!
The next obstacle was the salsa. I found my salsa a little too pink looking, and it did not have the chunky look. I decided to use fresh strawberries and raspberries as it would result in a brighter color. The color was still a little too bright, however it was better. I decided to try adding a speck of maroon food coloring too the dip, and I thought it added a little bit of depth. When looking at the salsa, I still did not feel like it looked like salsa. I then decided to add sesame seeds to look like the seeds of a pepper was in the salsa. I also dyed coconut shavings a green color to look like cilantro, and to me, it looked like real salsa! I was extremely surprised! I asked my friends what they thought, and they thought it looked like real salsa as well, however it was a sweet dip to go with the cookie!
