The Cookie Experiment – Part I

Not to brag, but I had the best cookie a few weeks ago at Orange Glory Cafe.  Actually, I’ve had it before.  I thought it was amazing back then, too.  But not having one for awhile and then having one again is just too much to handle.  I need to know how to make these cookies.

What I know:

• They’re lemon
• They’re very soft (not crumbly or greasy)
• They have white chocolate chunks
• They have pieces of either coconut or maybe lemon peel (?)

Easy enough.  There are probably tons of “lemon, white chocolate” cookies online (there are).  Many of them have pictures which ruled them out immediately.  These are not shortbread cookies, crinkle cookies, or drop cookies.  I kept looking.  Finally settling on two recipes as my starting point, I went with the one that had the fewest ingredients.  Are you ready?

• 1 box lemon cake mix
• 1/3 c. vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 c. white chocolate chips
• 1/4 c. coconut

Piece of cake (pun intended).  I copied the recipe as precisely as I could (it didn’t list a specific type of cake mix so I went with the only lemon cake mix I could find at our grocery store here in town – Duncan Hines).  The dough seemed pretty dry but I thought I would try a few on a tray and see how they turned out.  The result:

Nice lemony flavor, good amount of white chocolate chips, could used a little more coconut, didn’t flatten out while baking (I flattened them with a spoon about halfway through), a little too dry and crispy.

I decided to add a little bit of water (1/8 c.) and a little more vegetable oil (1/8 c.) to make the dough a little moister.  I also added a large pinch of coconut.  If I still had the full amount of dough, I would have tried adding a third egg but I was afraid with the amount I had already used for a tray of cookies that it would be too much.  That’s why this is an experiment!  The second batch looked like this (the one on the right):

Moist on the inside, still crispy on the outside and around the edges, nice balance of flavors, flattened out while baking.

Overall, a good start.  Didn’t quite get the consistency just yet but the flavor was great!  Stay tuned for Part II…

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Tags: baking, baking cookies, baking experiment, cookie recipe, cookies, lemon coconut cookies, lemon cookie recipe, lemon cookies, lemon cookies with white chocolate chips, recipes