Cookies
By: Tiina Otala
Tags: Cookie, University Of Minnesota, Baking, Design, Creative

The Firework was inspired by memories of summer nights.

The cookie has a rich base of dark chocolate, sour hints of strawberry, and a spicy kick of cinnamon and cayenne to heat the body like a warm evening. It evokes the familiar comfort of home in its novel combinations of piquancy and sweetness.

Early on, I settled on “summer” as a theme for my cookie designs. Having recently experienced the last summer of my childhood, I wanted to immortalize the carefree nights I enjoyed in my youth. This particular cookie is a celebration of a night from four years ago: my brother and I climbed to the roof of our house to watch the 4th of July fireworks shimmer above the suburban sprawl. He and I have since left home for college, and we haven’t found the time for a similar evening. I wished to capture my moment of warmth and comfort watching the night sky with a loved one; it was a memory that I hoped others could relate to.

July 4th, 2015

Ingredients

Produces approximately 12 cookies.

3/4 cup unbleached flour

1/4 cup white granulated sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1/4 cup freeze-dried strawberry (crushed into a powder). Leave an extra 1/4 cup for garnish!

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/3 tsp ground cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 egg

1/2 cup unsalted butter (melted)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder, strawberry powder, cinnamon, and cayenne together in a bowl. Make sure to mix thoroughly and evenly. Mix the melted butter, white sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla extract in a bowl until a creamy texture develops. Add in the egg, beating well. Gradually mix the dry flour mixture into the wet butter mixture. Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes. Form the dough into palm-sized balls and lightly press them into discs of about 1/4" thickness. Drop the dough discs onto the extra strawberry powder. Place them on the parchment paper with the strawberry powder side facing downwards. Bake for 10–11 minutes, or until the cookie center is soft and edges are crispy. It may be difficult to gauge cooking completion simply by appearance due to the dark color of the cookie. Allow the cookies time to cool.

Decoration (OPTIONAL)

Cricut Maker

White granulated sugar

Red copy paper

Red cardstock paper

Scotch tape

Using a pin or the end of a spoon, carve a hole through the center of each cookie. Using the Cricut Maker, cut the pinwheel pattern and 0.25" x 1.25" rectangles out of red copy paper. Using the Cricut Maker, cut the pinwheel holders out of red cardstock paper. Roll the 0.25" x 1.25" rectangles into a paper cylinder with a 0.25" height. Fold the pinwheel along the marked (drawn or scored) lines. Place a tiny piece of tape on the inside of the pocket. Close the pocket. Carefully fill each pocket with white granulated sugar. Fold the pockets back over, place the pinwheel on the paper cylinders, and keep the pinwheel in place with a pinwheel holder. Place the pinwheel in the hole on the cookie. Twist the paper cylinder to spin the pinwheel and spread the sugar in a firework pattern. Enjoy!

The dough after combining the flour and butter mixtures.

Notes from research into the cookie market, baking process, and cooking technique.

As a beginner to baking, I knew I needed to do a significant amount of research. I spoke to a group of 14 friends and family, examined the cookie aisle at Target, and interviewed a baker at Insomnia Cookies to get a better grasp on the cookie market. Additionally, I read The Flavor Bible and an article on the cookie baking process to understand how ingredients react and flavors balance.

Key Takeaways:

It’s all about presentation — appearance is the most important quality of the cookie. Without an enticing appearance, a customer won’t even give the cookie a chance. (Interviews, Insomnia Cookies)

— appearance is the most important quality of the cookie. Without an enticing appearance, a customer won’t even give the cookie a chance. (Interviews, Insomnia Cookies) Stay familiar, and surprise them. People are generally afraid of change. If the cookie looks ordinary or familiar at first glance, a consumer will be more willing to try it. (Interviews, Insomnia Cookies)

People are generally afraid of change. If the cookie looks ordinary or familiar at first glance, a consumer will be more willing to try it. (Interviews, Insomnia Cookies) Timing doesn’t matter when baking. The smell and look do. An experienced baker will recognize the scents of a Maillard reaction. Due to my lack of experience, I’ll have to learn on the job as I iterate. (Insomnia Cookies)

The smell and look do. An experienced baker will recognize the scents of a Maillard reaction. Due to my lack of experience, I’ll have to learn on the job as I iterate. (Insomnia Cookies) The emotional background of a cookie is what elevates food to an experience. Try to evoke memories (eg. the smell of mom’s home-cooking) through the senses. (Insomnia Cookies, The Flavor Bible)

Try to evoke memories (eg. the smell of mom’s home-cooking) through the senses. (Insomnia Cookies, The Flavor Bible) “Sometimes straightforward flavors are the ones people can latch onto, even though the ingredients can be very sophisticated behind the scenes…Sometimes the meals that hit home are not the ones that were the most complicated.” (The Flavor Bible)

Pages of brainstorming notes.

I wanted my cookie to have an emotional appeal above all else. Therefore, I began my brainstorming process with questions personal to me: What do I enjoy doing? What forms my identity? What is my notion of home?

I narrowed it down to three themes that I found most fascinating: movement, summer, and childhood. I’ve always appreciated dance and I recently began to learn with the university’s ballroom dance club. I wondered how I could potentially bring movement into the static world of a cookie. With the Minnesota State Fair marking the end of the summer, I was reminded of the joys of fair foods and activities. I went into a deep dive in the memories of my childhood. Eventually, I decided to combine summer and childhood into summer memories, and I resolved to introduce some form of motion into my final product.

I went ahead with three ideas, recipes that I dubbed “Camp Campbell,” “Boba,” and “Firework”.

Camp Campbell

I named the cookie “Camp Campbell” as it was motivated by recollections of an outdoor, week-long camp I attended in fifth grade. While on a night hike, we were instructed to stop in the middle of a meadow, go silent, and watch the sky. It was the first time I’d seen the stars without light pollution. I remember the peaceful silence and the sensation of the brisk night air; I wanted to emulate those feelings of calm with the cooling effect of cucumber and peppermint extract, my primary ingredients. I selected chocolate as the base to give it a dark color reminiscent of the night sky.

Camp Campbell in the oven.

Although the cookies had a strong mint smell as intended, I found that the cucumber was underwhelming and an eyesore. My floormates tried the cookie and enjoyed the mint, but they expressed disgust at the unfamiliar visual of the cucumber chunks. I personally felt that the cookie wasn’t creative enough as I had seen numerous mint cookie recipes and even a cucumber cookie recipe. There hadn’t been a recipe with mint and cucumber, but that was unsurprising as the cucumber was essentially pointless.

Boba

In the summer, bubble tea — or boba — is an enormously popular drink in my hometown of San Jose, California. All of my memories of the drink are associated with summertime hangouts with friends. Whenever I feel homesick in Minneapolis, I retreat to boba shops to get a comforting taste of home. I wished to bring both the bitter, creamy flavor of the milk tea and the chewy texture of the tapioca pearls into a cookie form.

However, tapioca pearls would spoil overnight, so tapioca was infeasible as an ingredient. Thus, I tried to replace it with gelatin, making holes in the cookies for pockets of jelly. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the gelatin would soak through the cookie. A cookie is simply not a hard enough mold. Once I noticed that my gelatin mixture was dampening the cookie, I decided not to proceed with the recipe, as the failure of the gelatin undermined the entire concept.

A few of my floormates did enjoy the cookie; they praised its mild taste and noted that it reminded them of crackers or sugar cookies. Two of my taste testers even requested a bag of the cookies. The cookie didn’t achieve the creaminess that I hoped for by adding condensed milk, nor did it have any of the bitterness of the tea. It made for an altogether bland cookie. Without the surprise of the gelatin, it was even more boring.

The first batch of Firework cookies.

Firework

I proceeded with the Firework cookie as I considered it the most creative. I couldn’t find another recipe with my strawberry-and-spice combination. Unlike the other two recipes, I was able to incorporate the element of movement with the pinwheel, a traditional symbol of summer fairs. When combined with a powder, the spinning pinwheel produces a pattern much like that of a firework. In terms of visuals, textures, and tastes, the Firework cookie was simply the most interesting idea to continue with.

The largest change to my idea was the removal of pop rocks, originally a key ingredient. I had planned to dispense pop rocks with the pinwheel so the consumer could experience an explosive texture like an actual firework. Unfortunately, I observed that the pop rocks wouldn’t hold overnight — they absorbed moisture and clumped together, clogging up the pinwheel. Pop rocks also couldn’t cook, instead melting into sugary holes in the dough.

I replaced the pop rocks in the pinwheel with white granulated sugar, as strawberry powder shared the same problem as pop rocks. The white sugar would hold overnight and produce a firework-like visual, though it unfortunately lacked the novelty of pop rocks. In the dough, I substituted pop rocks for strawberry powder, which did cook well. The powder provided a sour contrast to the sweetness of the chocolate. The cookies were becoming too rich as I increased the amount of chocolate to offset the blandness of the first batch. I had coincidentally baked a cookie with strawberry powder topping as a “what if” test. I asked my floormates to eat the cookie upside down so that the strawberry touched the tongue first and countered the chocolate immediately. They enjoyed the new combination, and I began baking with the strawberry powder both inside the dough and on the bottom of the cookie.

Another concern was the piquancy of the cayenne pepper — I worried that it would frighten people. I aimed to have the spiciness seep in slowly, leaving a gentle, warm aftertaste for that summer night sensation. I was lucky in my first estimation of cayenne as the spice proved to be subtle. I increased the amount in my second iteration, and my floormates expressed that it was too spicy. I realized that the spice in my second iteration batches was not overwhelming but inconsistent — some cookies were burning with flavor, others were completely bland. In future batches, I was careful to mix all of my dry ingredients thoroughly to avoid producing a spice bomb.

Second iteration of Firework cookies.

Concept sketch.

Iteration #1 — Recipe and observations.

Iteration #2 — Recipe and observations.

Iteration #2 — More observations.

Pinwheel

The pinwheel was arguably the most difficult aspect of the cookie design. The challenge was dispensing powder in a controlled manner — a pinwheel “pocket” has two openings, one at the side with the triangle-shaped tips, and one at the back (see first picture below).

For a time, I considered 3D printing a pinwheel for a more exact shape. However, I returned to the paper pinwheel as it matched the food setting better — plastic in food was off-putting.

I decided to form a pocket by folding the pinwheel an extra time. I created an abnormal shape with protruding triangles, different from the usual square of a pinwheel design. The new pocket controlled powder better, but it still had to be held in place. Thus, I used a tiny piece of tape to close one side of the pocket, and the other side folded as I formed the pinwheel, effectively closing the last opening. In the end, I produced a relatively contained pocket, with the only opening being at the tip of the four pinwheel “wings.”

Early concept test of pinwheel.

First pinwheel design.

Pinwheel measurements.

First pinwheel produced by the Cricut Maker.