Cucurbits.

Original recipe

1. Gathering Materials and Ingredients
Basic baking materials were needed and procured from the groups own household. Examples of these baking materials are teaspoon, measuring cup, tray, oven, spatula, and whisk. The ingredients needed were the following: all purpose flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, an egg, milk, vanilla extract, olive oil, and a few bits of chocolate. The special ingredients are, of course, kalabasa and malunggay.

2. Mashing of Kalabasa and Grinding of Malunggay
The orange flesh of the kalabasa was boiled for 5 minutes before it was mashed by a spoon or a fork. The malunggay leaves, on the other hand, were ground in a blender or minced with a knife, if a blender is unavailable.

3. Mixing of Powders
For the cookie mixture, the all purpose flour, sugar, cocoa powder and baking soda were mixed before the other ingredients were added. It is because powders are easier to mix when they are still loose.

4. Addition of Fluids

The fluids were then added to the mixture after the powders have been mixed thoroughly.

5. Forming the Dough

Once the fluids and powders have mixed well and formed dough, it was taken out and mashed. The dough was then divided into two – one to be mixed with vegetable mixture, and the other without the vegetable mixture.

6. Adding and Mixing the Vegetable Mixture and Dough

The vegetable mixture is then added to one of the dough and mixed until the whole solution becomes homogenous and darkish-brown color.

7. Baking in the Oven

The dough is then arranged on a tray, sized and shaped arbitrarily as the baker demands. It is then baked in the oven for 5 minutes, and flipped after another 5 minutes. Figure 4 shows the flowchart of the methodology.

What has been done

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup all purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon baking powder

½ cup softened butter

¾ cup white sugar

1 small egg

½ teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons milk

½ cup mashed squash

½ cup cocoa powder

olive oil

Procedure: 

1. Preheat oven at 375○F.

2. In a small bowl, mix the all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder and cocoa powder.

3. In a larger bowl, mix the butter and egg until mixture is homogenous. Add the egg, vanilla, and squash.

4. Add the dry ingredients.

5. Add milk.

6. Grease the pan with olive oil.

7. Fill ¼ of the pan with the dough.

8. Bake for 20 minutes.

9. Allow to cool.

10. Cut the product into approximately 1.5in x 1.5in brownie squares.

Evaluation/Results

     Since our recipe was self-made, it was pretty successful. The squash can neither be seen nor tasted in our product. Our product looked just like normal cookies. They were chocolate brown and rounded in shape. The taste was just like how a normal chocolate cookie would taste like. The cookies were also chewy and had a very smooth texture.
     As for the shelf life, we had a hard time testing this but in the end, we can conclude that our product can last as long as a month when refrigerated. 

     With our results, we can assume that the consumers will accept our product. We still need to find out the nutritional content of our product but all the other components are good to go.

Improvements and Packaging

     We have decided to make brownies instead of cookies because of its chewy and smooth texture that is almost that of a brownie’s. Since our product will be brownies, the shape will be squares and the size is 1.5in x 1.5in x 1in.

     We plan on wrapping each brownie in wax paper with a logo on it. This is because we plan on selling the brownies individually. Also, we will put six in a box for bulk orders.