Cookies

Baseline Goal, Original Ideation & Factors to Overcome

I was given the assignment to create a new cookie, and I approached this problem with two basic facts.

1. I am not a baker.  I do not recall ever having attempted to bake cookies myself
2. I was recovering from a night of heavy partying at a good friend's wedding the night before doing this work.

Now, ordinarily point number two would not be of interest or applicable to a class assignment, but in this case it gave me a craving for something savory rather than something sweet.  After going to the grocery store, nothing really looked appealing....


All of the standard commercial options were classic sweet cookies.



So instead, I started buying items that were closer to the flavor I was craving.  I got home, and using a basic oatmeal cookie as my base, I started editing the recipe in an effort to create what I was looking for.  The basic recipe came off of the Quaker Oats website.  You can see the recipe and my initial notes in the image below.

 Revision 0

 

 

On top of the markups in red, I also downsized the volume of the recipe knowing that there would probably be some iteration, and I can only eat so many prototype cookies....

Rev 0 Recipe:
1 cup oats
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons rosemary
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup parmesan cheese (powdered)
1 pinch of finely chopped green onion

I formed these into disks that were 3" in diameter and 1/4" in height.  These were then baked at 350 degrees F for about 16 minutes.  The result looked and tasted pretty good:

 

After the baking was complete, I had some post-tasting comments:

1. It needs a little less rosemary.  This may be a personal distaste for the herb, but it seemed strong
2. Some visual contrast would help.  I am thinking bigger pieces of green onion?  Possibly spinach for a brighter green?
3. The cook/bake time was perfect.  They came out done but still soft
4. A shredded parmesan might be better than powdered.  A "cheesier" flavor would be better

3rd Party Inspiration

 

At this point was also craving some real food, so I headed over to a cafe near my house for breakfast. Incidentally enough, they were serving up a scone option that reminded me of my product design goal. You can see the two options available in the picture to the right.  There is a "Strawberry Chocolate" as on option, and the other option available is "Spinach, Bleu Cheese, Green Onion".  This looked very similar to what I was going for with my cookie design, so I purchased one (and thoroughly enjoyed it).

Revision 1 Design

 
 With the next revision, I made some changes. I considered my notes from the revision 0 trial to add in some additional ingredients including the spinach, larger onion pieces, & shredded rather than powdered cheese. I should note that I ran out of shredded parmesan and supplemented with shredded asiago.

After really enjoying the scone that I picked up earlier for breakfast, I also decided to add in some blue cheese.  The tangy flavor of the cheese really added to the flavor of the scone, and I figured that it would also enhance the flavor of my cookies.

One thing of interest that I did notice was that the flavor definitely got overpowering if the pieces were too big.  As I measured in my self-determined amount, I only selected chunks that were less than approximately 1/4" in diameter.

The revision 1 recipe was as follows.  I used the same baking temperature and time as used in revision 0

1 cup oats
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon rosemary
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 cup parmesan cheese (shredded)
3/4 cup asiago cheese (shredded)
1 pinch of finely chopped green onion
3 teaspoons blue cheese (<1/4" chunks)
1/4 cup diced green onions
1/4 cup chopped spinach

Some comments post rev 1 bake:

1. The shredded cheese (including the supplemental Asiago) was very successful.
2. The ingredients added for aesthetics improve the flavor somewhat, and had significant improvement on the appearance
3. Overall flavor I was happy with the improvements

 Revision 2

At this point, I am pretty satisfied with the base cookie, but something was still missing.  Every cookie should have frosting!  Obviously this would have to be tailored to the situation though, I don't think that oreo stuffing would fit this particular cookie.

My initial list of options included the following:

1. Cheese spread
2. Flavored Hummus
1. Spicy red pepper
2. Garlic
3. Sundried tomato & basil
3. Olive Tapenade 

After trying a couple of different options and getting feedback from focus groups (hungry friends who were over at the time) the final contenders were a horseradish cheddar cheese spread and sundried tomato & basil hummus.  You can see in the images below, the two options as they were packaged.  Below that from left to right are three pieces of the revision 1 base cookie served plain, with hummus, and with cheese spread

 

Ultimatly, the hummus option won out.  It made manufacturing easier (spreading onto the cookie) and it was cheaper.  These could both be a factors if I decide to commercialize my product.

 

Final Design

After going through the iterative design process, my final recipe is as follows:

1 cup oats
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon rosemary
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 cup parmesan cheese (shredded)
3/4 cup asiago cheese (shredded)
1 pinch of finely chopped green onion
3 teaspoons blue cheese (<1/4" chunks)
1/4 cup diced green onions
1/4 cup chopped spinach
1 container of sundried tomato & basil hummus

The final product looks like this: