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Jordan Gilles Kadhirvel Manickam Sweet Tooth Satisfaction Problem: Propose an idea for a new dessert item that the world hasn’t really seen yet (at least not in most places). Anything that is sweet or indulgent could be considered a dessert, so feel free to be creative!

Solution: One night after our meal of quinoa, brussel sprouts, grilled chicken, and sautéed mushrooms, we were craving something sweet, but, as can be deduced by our evening meal, the two of us are quite the health nuts. A simple brownie, a small spoonful of ice cream, a trip to get an ice cream sandwich though these items satisfied our sweet tooths, we couldn’t bear to destroy

our bodies for the sugary sinful pleasures, plus we simply don’t have the time or desire to walk all the way down to get something. We needed something more. Though we may be health nuts, we can only eat fruit for so many nights and be satisfied. We are still college students at the end of the day, and one of our favorite desserts is some freshly baked cookies with some milk. Mmm...delicious! Reminds us of those Saturday afternoons we would come back from little league games, tired, hungry, with a sense of defeat looming over our heads (we are true born engineers). Yet, there on the table sat a fresh pile of cookies, lovingly prepared by our mothers. How those afternoons would suddenly turn from misery to pure, whole-hearted goodness. So there we were after our very healthy, though not incredibly delicious meal, we summed up our desires for a perfect post-meal guilty pleasure: cheap, healthy, portable, nostalgic, meaning it should involve fresh cookies, and who eats cookies without some milk to wash it down? Then it hit us: a cookie, encased in milk! We set about utilizing our chemistry skills to make such a delicacy possible. Knowing that milk, as a liquid, will be more readily absorbed by the cookie by the time it has a chance to freeze over it, we decided to change the form of our milk encasing. Yogurt. It is thicker, more flavorful, leaves a more lasting impact, and most importantly, much easier to prepare. Yet we found a problem with our yogurty concoction: it was a

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sticky mess. The yogurt just got everywhere and was a pain to consume, though it was delicious and uncannily enticing. We loved the idea of this yogurt-laden cookie because it fulfilled so many requirements of our perfect post-meal guilty pleasure: cheap, healthy (the cookie recipe found was not bad for one’s body), and definitely nostalgic. Then it occurred to us, why don’t we freeze the yogurt? By not having any large chunks of fruit in our yogurt (we used blueberry in our test batch), we found the yogurt was able to freeze quite well over our cookies. It made for an utterly delicious and not terribly sinful pleasure. We had found our guilty pleasure. Now whenever we come back, completely defeated by that physics midterm, at least we can be happy knowing that our yogurt cookies will be waiting for us at home. Here is the recipe that we used to create this delicious concoction: Cookies from MyRecipes Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 10 ounces)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup packed brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large egg whites

Cooking spray

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°. 2. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. 3. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt, stirring with a whisk.

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4. Combine sugars and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add vanilla and egg whites; beat 1 minute. Add flour mixture;beat until blended. 5. Drop dough by level tablespoons 2 inches apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. 6. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on pans for 2 minutes. Remove from pans; cool completely on wire racks. After the cookies came out, we let them cool for about 10 minutes, then we dipped each one into a bowl of blueberry yogurt, making sure that we covered each one completely. Then we set them in the freezer for about 2 hours, before they were frozen enough to be considered portable. Final Product (please excuse our poor photoshop skills):

Final List of ingredients (Prep time 10 minutes, bake time 10 minutes, cool time 2 hours, total time 2 hours and 20 minutes):

1. 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 10 ounces)

2. 1 teaspoon baking soda

3. 1/4 teaspoon salt

4. 1 cup packed brown sugar

5. 3/4 cup granulated sugar

6. 1/2 cup butter, softened

7. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

8. 2 large egg whites

9. Cooking spray

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10. 1 1/1 cups Flavored Yogurt

Citation 1. http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-chip-cookies-10000001622526/