Cookie not getting set in laravel

Having a tough time with checking if a cookie exists and then create/update the same. This is to check if user has selected a currency preference on the site and if yes, save that to a cookie and session. For this I've written the following helper function.

use Log;use App\Currency;use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\ModelNotFoundException;use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cookie;function store_currency($prefCurrency = null){    // If not passed, get from context    if( empty($prefCurrency) ){        if(request()->has('store_currency')){            $prefCurrency = request('store_currency');        } elseif (session()->has('store_currency')) {            $prefCurrency = session('store_currency');        } elseif (request()->hasCookie('store_currency')) {            $prefCurrency = cookie('store_currency');        } else {            $prefCurrency = env('APP_DEFAULT_CURRENCY');        }    }    // Uppercase it    $prefCurrency = strtoupper($prefCurrency);    // Is this an active currency?    try{        $c = Currency::findOrFail($prefCurrency);    }catch(ModelNotFoundException $mnfe){        $prefCurrency = env('APP_DEFAULT_CURRENCY');    }    // Update the context    //dump('Currency set to: ' . $prefCurrency);    Cookie::forever('store_currency', $prefCurrency);    session()->put('store_currency', $prefCurrency);    // prints null always :(    //Log::debug('cookie: ' .  Cookie::get('store_currency') );    return $prefCurrency;}

Here is how I call this helper function from a controller method.

public function order(Request $request, $currency = null){    $currency = store_currency($currency);    $plans = ServicePlan::popuplarPlansForHome('UNL', 5)->get();    $selectedPlan = $request->plan_id ? : '';    $right_now = Carbon::now();    return view('checkout/order', compact('plans', 'selectedPlan', 'right_now'))        ->withCookie(Cookie::forever('store_currency', $currency));}

Looks like I'm missing something here, please help. No errors but cookie doesn't show up.

P.S and the route is declared like below:

Route::group(['middleware' => 'web'], function () {    Route::get('checkout/order/{currency?}', 'CheckoutController@order')->name('newOrder');});

Further, when I try to dump the cookie from a view here is what I see:

store_currency=deleted; expires=Tue, 03-Mar-2015 10:43:39 GMT; path=/; httponly