Cookie R&D: Stranger in Bangkok x David's Soft Cookies

Last weekend, I traveled 800km, deep into Isaan, to the border city of Nakhon Phanom, to spend 8 hours spread over 2 days, in the kitchen of David Okamoto, founder of David's Soft Cookies.

This is a journey not many people will be interested to take, but for me, it was one of the most exciting trips ever, because not only was I able to share precious time with a good friend, I could also be personally involved in coming up with an all-new cookie flavour in collaboration with the cookie master himself.

More importantly, I got to see for myself how passionate and dedicated David is over his craft, and understood that my faith in him over the years is well-placed.

Stranger in Bangkok doing his part.

I was very excited when David pitched the idea of working on a cookie flavour together. I love conceptualizing new dishes and flavours, even at home while cooking for my family. We eventually settled on coming up with a lemon white chocolate cookie, so here goes....

We need some green lime and yellow lemons of course.

Unfortunately, the local green lime zest tasted too unforgiving, so we could only use the yellow lemon zest.

Blanch multiple times to get rid of the bitterness.

No time to confit multiple times, so once will do for this trial batch.

The way David manipulated the dough, I think he can shape the cookies blindfolded with hands behind his back.

Into the oven!

Voila!

3 versions of the same flavour, all excelling in its own way.

I have always known that baking is a science, but this exercise convinced me that in baking, aside of talent, discipline and precision is everything. A slight tweak in the recipe (even 1 additional egg yolk for a batch of 12 cookies) will give a completely different result.

I was also shocked to note that a traditional chewy soft cookie has almost twice the amount of sugar a normal David's cookie has, though it does not taste doubly sweet at all.

In conclusion, our lemon white chocolate cookie was a major success. Everyone who tried it (albeit a small sample size) had good things to say. Then again, some fine-tuning is required, to further enhance the flavour profile as well as the outlook of the cookie.

Release the lemon cookie please?

I do not know whether David will eventually release the cookie. I only know that when he does (if he does), I will be a really really proud man, and do make sure you readers support me by ordering and telling me how you like it!