"Come into the kitchen, Pauly," Pippa told her friend. "Jolena is baking cookies, and she said we could watch––maybe even help."
Pauly had just come. Whenever he came to visit, he had no idea what the dolls would be doing, but it was always interesting. Pauly thought he was lucky to meet Pippa his first day at doll school.
"We just started," Pippa told him.
Jolena was standing on the tall stool at the kitchen counter. She turned when the two smaller dolls came in. "Hi, Pauly!" she said in greeting. "I thought that might be you at the door just now." (It isn't often you hear someone climb up on the chair on the porch by the doorbell right before it rings unless it's Pauly.)
"I'm going to bake some cookies for us to pretend to eat," Jolena said.
"What kind of cookies are you baking this time?" Pippa asked.
"These will be oatmeal-raisin cookies," Jolena replied. "I just got everything out."
Pippa and Pauly climbed up to sit where they could watch Jolena without being in the way.
Jolena had two bowls: a larger bowl and a smaller bowl. In the larger bowl, she measured some flour and then added some oatmeal. "I'm using whole wheat flour," she told them, "and rolled oats. This is the same stuff we use to make oatmeal for breakfast."
"Jeffy likes oatmeal," Pauly said. "They put raisins in it when they make it at my house."
"Raisins are good with oatmeal," Jolena agreed. "In fact, this cookie recipe calls for raisins, but sometimes I use dried cranberries or even chocolate chips. I'm using raisins today."
"You're going to love these cookies," Pippa told him, although she didn't really know if this was the same recipe she had pretended to eat before. Everything Jolena fixed was always delicious, especially when you have a doll's imagination
Jolena used some measuring spoons to measure out some white powder. "This is baking powder," she told them. It will put some air into the cookies as they bake. It has two different kinds of powder in it. When they're mixed with water or another liquid, they make a gas. The gas makes the cookies rise, so they're a little puffy."
Jolena added the baking powder to the bowl.
"Isn't gas what Jeffy's parents put into the car to make it go?" Pauly wanted to know.
Jolena didn't laugh. She knew that was a common misunderstanding. "Well," she said, "that kind of gas is gasoline. It's like a nickname for it. That's the fuel that makes the car run. It's a liquid, though, but a real gas is something like air." Jolena waved her hand around, as if Pauly could see the air around them.
She thought for a moment as she tightened the lid on the baking powder. "Does Jeffy's family have a tea kettle?" she asked.
"That's something they use to boil water for tea," Pippa told him, in case he didn't know.
Pauly thought. "Pauly's mother likes to drink tea," he said, thinking.
"She has a kind of a thing like a pitcher she puts on the stove," he said. "She fills it with water. Then she heats it up. It makes a noise when the water is hot."
"OK," Jolena said, "so have you ever noticed a sort of mist coming out of it when it's hot, or when she pours the boiling water into her cup or teapot?"
Pauly nodded.
"That's steam," Pippa said. "It's very hot and wet."
"That's right," Jolena said, reaching for another small container on the counter. "Steam is a gas. When water gets very hot, it turns into a gas and goes into the air. Well, that's what happens to the baking powder. It makes the cookies a little puffy."
"When you put water in the freezer," Pippa told Pauly, "it turns into ice. I think that's called a solid." The smaller girl looked at Jolena to make sure she wasn't giving Pauly the wrong information.
"Yes," Jolena agreed, "and when I make popsicles, I pour fruit juice or orange juice mixed with yoghurt into little cups and freeze it. You have to put a spoon in each one before it gets hard. Freezing turns the liquid into a solid. It goes from being soft and runny to hard and firm."
When Jolena had finished adding things to the larger bowl, she reached for the smaller one.
Jolena broke an egg into the bowl. Then she measured some oil into a cup and added it to the egg. Next, she used the same measuring cup to measure some honey, then added something from a bottle. She mixed these things together with a thing she called a whisk.
The younger dolls watched in fascination, as Jolena added the contents of the larger bowl to the smaller one and stirred it all together.
Then Jolena measured out some raisins to put into the mixture.
When the raisins were mixed in with everything else, Jolena put some white paper down on a cookie sheet. "This is special paper for cooking and baking," she told Pauly and Pippa. "It's called parchment (PARCH-munt) paper."
She dropped spoonsful of the cookie dough onto the paper. She made them doll-size.
Jolena put the cookie sheet carefully into the oven. "I have to be very careful," she told them, as much to remind herself as to teach them how to be careful around a hot stove. "I don't want to melt my vinyl!"
"Now we have to check it in fifteen minutes," Jolena said, as the smaller dolls helped her put everything away. It was nice having helpers, even such little ones.
The three dolls went to sit down in the living room, where they could be comfortable and have a chat while the cookies baked. "They should be ready in just a few minutes," Jolena told Pippa and Pauly. "Then we can each pretend to eat a cookie with some milk."
"Jeffy's mother," Pauly told the girls, "always tells Jeffy to brush his teeth after he's eaten cookies."
"Yes," Jolena agreed. "Real human people can get holes in their teeth if they don't keep them clean, and cookies, candy or dried fruit really need to be cleaned off their teeth."
"Billy and I visited the dentist once," Jolena told the smaller dolls. "A dentist is someone who looks after teeth for human people."
"At the dentist's office we got to see some of the tools they use to clean teeth.," she explained. "Dolls need to pretend to have their teeth cleaned and the holes filled, even though we don't have teeth. We do it so real children know what it's like. We took turns sitting in the big chair to pretend to have our make-believe teeth checked and cleaned."
"I like to pretend to brush my teeth," Pauly said. "Jeffy brushes his teeth before he goes to bed, and I like to watch and pretend I'm doing it, too, even though dolls don't have any teeth."
"We don't have teeth," Pippa said, "but some dolls do. They have teeth in front you can see in their mouths. They have to have teeth, if their mouths are sort of open, except for baby dolls. That's because real babies don't have teeth yet."
Just as Pauly was saying that he would like to see a doll with teeth, the timer went off.
The dolls went back into the kitchen, and Jolena looked at the cookies through the little window in the oven door. "They look done," she said.
She turned off the oven and took the cookie sheet out. Yes, they were done. They were a pretty brown color on the bottom. The dolls all thought the cookies looked yummy.
Jolena put the cookies on a rack so they could be cooling off while she was getting out a plate and pouring milk for each doll.
Soon the dolls were in the dining room, pretending to eat the cookies. They enjoyed pretending to take little bites and munch on them, between make-believe sips of milk.
"I'd better go home," Pauly said when he had finished pretending to eat his cookie. "I need to pretend to brush my teeth! Thank you for the cookie and milk!"
With that, he was out the door and gone. Pippa gave a big sigh.
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
• 3⁄4 cups rolled oats
• 1⁄4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1⁄4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1⁄4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon desired)
• 1⁄4 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1⁄4 cup raisins (or dried cranberries or chocolate chips)
In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.
In another bowl, mix all the wet ingredients together. (If you measure the oil first, the honey won't stick to the measuring cup).
Mix the wet stuff with the dry stuff. Add the raisins and walnuts and mix. If the mixture seems too wet, add a bit of flour. If it isn't binding together very well, you may wish to add an egg white.
COOL the dough in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 335 degrees.
Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Make them small if they are for dolls.
Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden on the bottom of the cookie.
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
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Copyright © 2022 by Peggy Stuart
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