Dia De Los Muertos Cookies

To start this project in the discovery phase we had to go through the design thinking process. The first thing I did was to interview people about their thoughts on Halloween. The questions I asked were the following:

• What is your favorite part of Halloween? Why?
• When someone mentions halloween what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Why?
• What are your favorite treats for Halloween? Why?
• On what product are you willing to spend the most on Halloween? Why?

By the responses I observed many people like treats and going with their kid's trick or treating, they don't like to buy expensive things for Halloween and they liked bright colors like the ones we use in El Dia De Los Muertos so I figured out that many people like more El Dia De Los Muertos.

Then I went through the defining phase and I started to think about the drivers (needs) and constraints (challenges to be solved) about my project overall without having an idea. I figured that my project had to be creative, yummy, sweet, and still have that spooky Halloween vibe. For the challenges, it was to come up with a topic, idea, money, and include culture.

After going to all this design thinking I started to go through the ideation phase and started to sketch my ideas including the drivers and constraints. I came up with 16 ideas and finally choose the one I wanted to do. I wanted to do cookies that represent El Dia De Los Muertos not just because of the bright and fun colors but because we are unerring the death and all those people who made impacts in our lives. This is a fun and cultural idea. The people I interviewed helped me a lot to know the likes and dislikes about Halloween and that's also how I came up with this idea.

This Materials are very easy to find you can go to a close super market or even find them in your house!

Materials:
-Frosting

-Sugar cookie mix

-Colorant

-Sprinkles (Optional)

-Ziplocs (Optional)

-Icing nozzles (Optional)

-Tray

-Oven

-Microwave

-Butter

-Eggs

-Mixing bowls

-Spoons (Optional)

-Toothpicks

-Color/Markers

-Paper

Your first step is to grab a piece of paper and start doing clearly your design and choosing the colors for your cookies to be 100% ready for when you start making them and decorating. This helps your organization and you also don't get confused. If you want you can improvise but we found out it will be easier to have colored, detailed, designs ready.

Now what you want to do is set up your materials to start baking! You got to make sure you got all of them, some are optional like the sprinkles and the icing nozzles with the Ziplocs, that you can use them to decorate. Also, the spoons are optional because when baking you can mix with hands.

After having everything ready its time to bake the cookies! Now let me gide you through the steps to bake.

1. So what you want to do first is pour in the flower thats inside the sugar cookie mix bag.

2. Then you will crack ONE egg.

3. You will now want to soften your butter, you don't want to melt it but you want to soften it so you can be able to mix it in with the egg and the flower so you put it in the microwave for 10 seconds.

4. Then you can start mixing with hand or spoons.

5. After your mixing is done you will add butter to your tray so the cookie won't stick to the actual tray.

6. Then you will grab a little bit of the batter and make it in circles you can choose your size but I recommend you to do them small because they will get very big.

7. After doing your cookies you can make as much as you want you will put it in the oven.

(If you have any questions about the degrees or time in the sugar mix bag at the bag it tells you all that information)

Now is the time for the most fun part, the decorating!

1.While your cookies are at the oven first you will want to get the mixing bowls and add white frosting and colorant to get different colors.

2. Then you will get your cookies out and wait for them to cool off.

3. Now what I did is to add a white base so it will look neater.

4. Finally, I grabbed my paper and choose four designs for my four cookies and started to decorate them like the designs.

This is the results! Now you got your dia de Los Muertos theme! Hoped you enjoyed making this project and that you had lots of fun. This was all about experiencing design thinking and having fun.