26-04 FLAVOR OF THE MONTH: BLUEBERRY CREAM CHEESE
Part of my cookie series. This is for April.
Read about the introduction and idea of this project in the inaugural post.
Months always evoke a color for me, and April has always been a pale/light blue. I forgot what the inspiration was; perhaps Daniel was eating a blueberry cheesecake, and in my head I thought:
blueberry
+
cream cheese
=
light blue
BLUEBERRY CREAM CHEESE
This has been my most experimental recipe. Even though I'm baking more regularly now, I am far from a baker, which I believe to be a quite scientific profession—precise measurements, understanding the environment and chemical reactions that would occur. I've always likened it to chemistry, a subject I nearly failed at in high school.
When in doubt, I follow my gut. While I like my facts and figures, when I don't know something, I just go with feeling.
Trial #1
I followed my standard recipe, using less sugar since I felt that the blueberries might provide some sweetness. And then it all went wrong rather quickly.
Adding in the blueberries
I bought fresh blueberries, I think around 100 grams, I don't remember! It could've been more. I added them into the mixture and folded them in. The dough got extremely wet and sticky to a worrying degree. The idea was that I would wrap the cream cheese into the dough, like a dumpling. I needed Daniel's help to scoop in teaspoons of cream cheese into my lumpy monstrosities, which were impossible to wrap. I ended up having to pile on more dough to create a ball, which resulted in GIANT BLOBS. This recipe usually makes 12 cookies—I could only make seven!
Notice how sticky they are. It was almost like working with fresh oatmeal or something.
They appeared to smooth out and just turn into giant cookies, which I'm ok with!
The second picture filled me with hope. Perhaps the heat will make them firm them up!
They didn't crisp up like I'd hoped.
It was like cutting into a muffin.
They looked spongy when I took them out of the oven, so I hoped they would firm up after cooling down. While they look okay, they had the texture of a muffin, which doesn't sound so bad, but handling them wasn't very pleasant. My hand got really sticky.
Just eating a giant, flattened muffin.
You've heard of cruffins (croissant + muffin), what about a mookie? Muffookie?* Cookuffin? I can imagine these wouldn't sell well.
* So I searched for "muffookie" just in case it means something horrible (it just sounds offensive), and TURNS OUT IT'S A REAL THING. Maybe people don't mind their hands getting sticky?
Verdict
Taste: ★★★★
Experience: ★
I'm including an experience test, because according to Daniel, this was the best tasting cookie out of the series! However, to give it 5 stars wouldn't be fair, because I hated the experience of it. I don't like when my hands get sticky, and I wanted to eat a cookie, not a muffin.
Cold muffookie.
I put it in the fridge because of the cream cheese and also hoped that the cookie would somehow harden. Instead, I ate it cold which was even worse.
Until next time
I definitely want to redo my "failed" experiments. Next time I will only include one fresh blueberry per cookie and use dried ones to maintain the texture that I enjoy.
I will be baking two types of cookies tomorrow for our dinner party, but only one will be the official flavor-of-the-month, i.e., using the same base recipe. I thought about including the other as the FOTM, but it's a completely different recipe and a traditional one at that. So it doesn't follow the criteria of my project.
TBH I'm getting kind of tired of this project but I want to see it to completion because it's only once per month. I thought I'd grow to love baking but it's not my thing at all. However I'm curious about the "failed" experiments so next year I'll just do those. Next year I'd rather try a savory recipe of the month, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.