u/cracked_person

What could I have done to make it look better?

After a mango Day 24, I am back with a vulnerable cookie moment. Vulnerable because this cookie involves frosting, something I suck at. I am so bad at it that I accidentally made a poop cookie 😭 I posted it online, got some good roasts, and then deleted it from 2-3 places.

What I did today:
- Made brownie cookies - 70g brownie batter + 10g choco lava centre made up of chocolate chunks.
- Had leftover vanilla frosting, which instead of putting in a piping bag (can't afford another failure), i simply put it in a bowl and used a spoon to scoop it.

My vision: A brownie sundae, but does it look like it? What else can I do to improve it visually?

Tasting Review:
It's going to be biased, but I absolutely loved it. I feel I should send some of the cookies to you guys and see if the cookies actually taste decent or if I'm just imagining it. Any of you live in Delhi NCR?

Learning:
A small learning: don't give up on something (frosting for me) if you are not able to do the ideal way. Find your own ways to do that, and you might have created something.

Thanks for reading! 🥰

After a quiet Day 23, I am back with a mango cookie 🤓 As the mango season is ending, I want to pay my tribute to this summer fruit. Pardon for the bad videography 😢

What I did:
- Made 6 cookies; every 2 had some alterations.
- First 2: 50g dough + 5-6g dried chopped mangoes
- Second 2: 50g dough + 5-6g dried chopped mangoes + 5-6g white choc chunks
- Last 2: 50g dough + 7-8g white choc chunks
- I also made a mango frosting to layer my cookies with. And had some leftover mango puree/mango chunks.

Learnings:

1. Cookies with fresh fruit-based topping have much less shelf life.
2. Generally, the rule is to keep the frosting and the cookie separately and put the frosting on before consuming.
3. There's also a concept of cold cookies, so in case you like your cookies cold, put the frosting on the cookie and store it in the refrigerator in airtight conditions and consume it within 1-2 days for the best quality.

Tasting Review:
- The white chocolate (sweet) and the yogurt (tangy) frosting go super well.
- The little mango chunks in between give a nice experience too and add to the chewiness of the cookie.
- My personal favourite: 50g dough + 5-6g dried mangoes with the frosting.
- Without the frosting, I didn't enjoy the cookie as much tbh because the dried mangoes were a little less in quantity, and so I wasn't getting the taste of mango.

Thanks for reading :D

After a chocolaty Day 22, I am back with an Independence Day version of cookies 🤓

What I did:
- Made white chocolate cookies - 50g dough + 8-10g white chocolate
- After letting them cool down at room temp, I added the vanilla frosting and since it is the Independence Day weekend, I wanted to make it a little more fun and made use of food colors.
- One of them I consumed immediately after shooting 😂 and the other I have kept in the refrigerator and will be tomorrow.

Insights:
What I made is nothing but a vanilla frosted cookie, which for me I really liked it. There are a few things to keep in mind, as the frosting can add to the sugar of the whole dessert, and so how much are we putting on it. I made 2 versions for myself and put a lot of frosting on one and a little less on the other.

The most important question: the base of the frosting. It is a cream cheese based vanilla frosting.

I am still learning to ace the buttercream and whipped cream versions.

Thanks for reading! Hope you had a great weekend and happy 80th India day to all of us 🇮🇳

After a brownie Day 21, I am back to trying out new flavours.

What I did today:
- Made two Kit Kat cookies - 50g dough + 8g Kit Kat chunks + 5-6g dark chunks
- Made two silk chocolate cookies - 50g dough + 9g silk chunks + 5-6g dark chunks
- I baked both of them at 185 celsius for 13.5 minutes.

Learnings:
Because I wanted the Kit Kat cookie to seem like that, I put a chunk of Kit Kat on top of the cookie BEFORE baking. As we can see, the Kit Kat cookie is melted in a weird way and also burnt in some places. Next time, whatever chunks I want to put on, I will be putting them after baking the cookies so I get a better look.

I have ordered different kinds of sugar, and in the coming few days I will be posting my results after trying my recipe with those instead of my brown sugar.

A very happy Independence Day to you all. 🇮🇳

Thank You to everyone who have supported me in this journey and helped me stay consistent. It has kept me going! Thanks for reading 🤓

I love my 🇮🇳

First time doing this 🤓

First time did a cake 🤓

After a monster Day 20, I am back, and today I take it light. I had some leftover brownies and I was also making a mango cake. So I had some mango frosting as the leftover 😂 (So many leftovers) I just thought of making a brownie mango pudding 🤓

This is what I have for you guys today.

Tasting Review:
The brownie chocolate is a little too dark and so the overall taste of the pudding is a little bitter. Since I am used to dark chocolates and consume 70% dark chocolates everyday, it worked for me. But for people in my home who prefer a little of milky taste of chocolate, it could improve.

Insights:
Whenever I make brownie it's with 70% dark chocolate only and they taste amazing. But when I made it in cookie size, the 70% dark chocolate was throwing a little of bitter taste. I am not sure why that was happening and so I am a little confused. Will further inspect this.

I am thinking of opening a YT channel and officially posting the recipes and updates there. What are some of your fav dessert related youtube channels?

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend 🤓

I come here after Day 19 with a another version of monster cookies. Monster cookies are made up of oats, peanut butter, m&ms (i used gems) and chocolate chips/chunks. On Day 19, I used everything except oats.

I found the missing oats at home, and so I rolled some into today's cookies.

What I did:
- Made OG cookie dough and filled it with chocolate chunks, gems and a peanut butter centre, along with chocolate oats.
- Baked at 185 celsius for 13.5 mins.
- Dough structure: 50g dough + 6-7g gems + 4-5g chocolate chunks + 8g peanut butter centre + 4g oats
- Made 4 cookies out of which one was gone before shooting 🤓

Insight:
In the previous cookie version, I had the peanut butter as the centre and then the gems and the chocolate chunks were on top. I found that better than the current version I had. Also, I would really like to try a version with plain oats instead of chocolate oats.

I want to try a lot of different flavours, do you have any suggestions for me?

Thanks for reading 🤓

After Day 18, I am back with monster 👹 cookies and brownie cookie 🤓

What I did:
- Monster Cookies - full of gems (replacement of M&Ms), chocolate chunks, and a peanut butter centre 🤏 70g each, baked at 185 celsius for 13.5 mins
- Brownie Cookies - full of brownie chunks 🤠 65g each baked at 185 celsius for 13.5 mins.

Tasting review:
- Monster cookies are so good and underrated. I love them.
- Brownie cookie, they taste good too. I feel brownie overpowers the taste of the cookie dough a little.

Insights:
- In my monster cookies, I haven't added oats but tomorrow I am making a version where I would be adding the oats. Nonetheless, the cookies were great this way too.
- There are so many ways to combine a brownie and cookie dough and I really need to see if this brownie cookie tops the list or not. Right now, it doesn't. I prefer brownie cookie bars instead!

I am thinking of doing a small giveaway for this community. You all have supported me throughout in every way, and I want to give back through some baked goods. It would specifically be for Delhi NCR only. What do you think? Would you be interested?

Thanks for reading! It's mid-week, 2 more work days left, and then comes the weeeeeeekendd 💃

I had some leftover 20g cookie dough which I used to decorate my brownie cookies 🤏 how do they look?

After Day 17, I am back with the OG chocolate chunk and brownie cookies 🤓

What I made:

1. 4 brownie cookies of 65-70g each. Baked at 185 celsius for 13.5 mins.
2. 2 chocolate chunk cookies of 50g dough + 14g chunks. Baked at 185 celsius for 13.5 mins.

Yesterday's tasting review:
I made giant cookies yesterday and they taste just more than amazing. I love the balance of chocolate and the dough. I could have baked for a minute more but it was great regardless. Thanks, EggplantLife1089 for the millionth time 🤓

Insight:
My brownie cookies are a little cakey in texture. I would want to understand more about the texture of brownie cookies. If any of you have any tips or anything at all, I would love to know.

Tomorrow I am trying brownie cookie but the brownie chunks would be mixed in the cookie dough and monster cookies 👹 I am looking forward to it.

Any other flavours you would want me to try for you? I would love to.

Thanks for reading! Have a tiramisu Tuesday evening 🤓

After a very brownie Day 16, I finally baked two giant cookies as suggested by EggplantLife1089. I was really excited, nervous and everything because I wanted this to be kinda a success. 🤓

What I did:
- Used my OG cookie dough and then followed the steps suggested by EggplantLife1089.
- Expectation: They asked me to make a dough of 140gm and fill it with 17gm of chocolate in the middle and bake at 170 celsius for 15-17 mins.
- Reality: I made 140gm + 17gm dough balls as suggested, which was the easier bit. I also kept the temp to be 170 as suggested and then baked for 15 mins, 17 too, but the cookie was not done 😭 and I kept checking after each minute and exceeded by 4 mins total to reach some browning around the edges and also a set top. I didn't want to overcook since we still want soft and gooey results and not a biscuit-like hard texture.

Tasting is yet to be done for this. Will be doing that tomorrow.

Regarding the tasting of my brownie cookies that I made on Day 16 🤤, well well well, they taste amazing. Even better than the brownie shape, maybe I am getting obsessed with the cookie shape. As I had made 2 attempts for the brownie cookies, the first attempt had little burnt edges and the second one was perfect. So for me, the time for brownie cookies of around 60-70g each is 13.5 mins.

Learning:
As EggplantLife1089 had suggested a certain workflow to me, and I was expecting it to work perfectly for me; however, it didn't. So I believe the reason is the recipe formula. Probably my recipe formula is not suited for such big cookies to be done within 15-17 mins and that's why it took 21 mins. It just means for me as well that if I take any of recipes or tips, I should follow it from 0 to 100 with no alterations. Since this time I only took the workflow and no recipe, it partially failed.

Gratitude:
Thanks to EggplantLife1089 for suggesting me this. All through it was such an exciting thing to try out and I am glad I finally did. I would love to have the recipe you follow too so I can actually make these chunky cookies in 15-17 mins 🤓

Thanks for reading guys 👉👈🥺 Hope you were able to get past the Monday blues and work fruitfully 🤓

Today was a great Day 16 after Day 15. I didn't want to bake because I was feeling tired with other things but suddenly I went into the kitchen to make my dinner and simultaneously prepped brownie batter. What I had in mind was to make regular brownies but I am so glad I tried something new, brownie cookies 🤏

What I did:

1. Made 400g brownie batter.
2. Let it rest for 1-2 hours at room temp.
3. Scooped little batter and put it on parchment paper as it is and baked them.
4. Since this is my first time trying brownie cookies, I was not sure of the baking time.
5. The 3rd picture that you see is my first attempt. They are around 65-70g each and I baked them for 15 mins. My sister tried and told me that from the edges they seemed burnt. So I knew I needed to reduce my timing.
6. The first and second pictures were baked in one tray for 13.5 minutes. Yet to try it and so will be giving the review tomorrow for it.
7. All were baked at 185 celsius.

Learning:
Never be afraid to experiment. I had legit 20g of cookie dough leftover and instantly was like I need to utilise it and so I just made random patterns with it on two brownies and by the look of it they seem really nice too. I will definitely share my review after eating them too. 🤤

Hoping you all have a really fudgy brownie week ahead :D

Thanks for reading.

After an OG Day 14, I wanted to make something vanilla, and so I gave another try to the southern tea cake cookies.

What I did: I have already shared that on Day 13.

Insights:
I want to work on my photography skills (clearly 😭 ).
The spread was a little different than what I saw in the first trial.

Learnings:
I have been noticing that the spread of cookies between batches is a little different for me sometimes, and I want to inspect further why that is the case. I am using the same recipe throughout, but I believe other things like butter temp, dough temp, and even chill time can be a cause of this, and going further, I would be noticing such things at a greater depth in order to make a consistent texture of my cookies.

What are you upto this weekend? I have a very interesting Sunday because I would be trying out suggestions given by one of you: EggplantLife1089. Can't wait to see how it goes for me 🤓

Thanks for reading!

After Day 13 and trying out so many amazing versions of cookies to date, I am back to the chunky style OG chocolate chip cookies.

Today I did a very different experiment. I chopped my chocolate in a thick manner. Usually I would do smaller pieces of chocolate. I made 4 dough balls of 49g dough + 13-14g chocolate filling.

The result was something really unexpected:

1. They take more time to bake. Mine are still a little underbaked after baking them for 15 mins at 185 celsius.
2. Because the filling is "thicker" in nature, it prevents the cookie from spreading a lot. I say this because my chocolate chip cookies spread a little more. You can see Day 1 and notice the difference.
3. Taste-wise, they are a little different. If we do smaller chunks of the same size (13-14g), they take more space, and it's a little more chocolaty. For these big chunks, there was less space, but wherever there was chocolate, they were like puddles when I ate them. Both offer different experiences, and one needs to decide what they like.

The above-stated points are my learning as well. Maybe you can try it too and let me know how it turns out for you? Smaller chunks vs bigger chunks 👀

Thank you for reading!

After Day 12, I am back at it again and hopefully there are no breaks atleast for 21 days this time 😭

What I did today: baked my Southern tea cake cookies!

Southern Tea Cake cookies are basically inspired from the UK wherein the baked good is a cookie but it's a little cakey unlike the chunky cookies.

More info on my process:

1. Simply replace the brown sugar in your original cookie recipe with white/castor sugar.
2. Make dough balls of 50-55g each and chilled them for sometime. I chilled mine for 1-1.5 hours.
3. Bake them straight from the chilling at 185 celsius for 13-14 mins. I baked mine for 13.5 mins.

Learning:
Instead of trying a lot of recipes for cookies, stick to one and see how you can alter it for other versions. This is something I have followed, which has improved my cookies over time and also prevents me from tracking a lot.

I tried a lot of chocolate chip cookie recipes. I chose the one that I liked the most. And now for various versions like the chocolate dough, now the tea cake cookies, I have made changes to that very recipe and am trying things.

Wins:
This was my first time doing a tea cake cookie and well it turned out great and so I can be proud at myself for .......... 30 seconds 🤓

Thanks for reading!