Food Scientist Meeting

The day after I got back to Michigan for break, I met with a food scientist named Bri. I hired her a month ago to redevelop the recipe for the waffle cookies. I was originally introduced to her because she is the on-staff food scientist for a pie company, the company that will potentially become our co-packer in the future.

           I met Bri at a tea café in Birmingham where she had brought six different waffle cookie flavors for me to sample and one control sample that she had made using my old recipe. We talked about my goals in redeveloping the recipe and then proceeded to taste the samples. Although they were only the initial round of prototypes, I could clearly taste the improvements. Bri, being a culinary expert, knew how to properly combine the ingredients and also which ingredients to use and not use. For example, she used full fat butter and pearl sugar instead of the normal butter and granulated sugar that I had been using. After tasting all the samples and providing my feedback to her, she packaged the samples for me to take home and continue with a week long taste test to see how the flavor and texture changes over time.

            Another issue we discussed was the desired consistency of the recipe. There are unique advantages to using a batter since it is easier to pour into a waffle iron. However, a batter does not automatically cook evenly so it is necessary to use a rotating waffle iron. On the other hand, a dough would cook evenly in a waffle iron but it is often more difficult to spread across the iron. On Wednesday, I had a call with a man who started a frozen waffle company and he explained the complications he had run into trying to find a smaller-scale waffle co-packer. He said that most manufacturers with waffle iron equipment are set up for dough pucks which is difficult for him since he uses a batter.

            The next step is to meet with Bri again when I am home for winter break in 3 weeks. From there we will work on honing in on a final recipe that can be sent to the Michigan State University Product Center for shelf life testing and recipe analysis.