It all started with a cookie recipe.
Back in June of 2010 Eli and I worked at Camp of the Good
Shepherd in Louisville, NE before we moved to Romania. Penny Burkum was the cook for a couple of the
camps and I helped her. She had this
amazing chocolate chip cookie recipe that made one of the most amazing homemade
cookies I had ever had. Now I have baked a lot of cookies of all flavors in my
life, but they never seem to turn out good.
They always are flat and get crunchy very quickly…please help if you got
any solutions for this. After making
this amazing recipe a few times I am convinced that it is not recipe that makes
the cookies amazing, but the person baking them. There is just something about Penny and the
love she put in them that was just amazing.
Happy Birthday (in English) A birthday cake for one the kids. |
The first time we had a team from the US come over was after
we had lived here just two weeks if I remember right. I wanted to try my hand at the amazing
chocolate chip cookies. They turned out ok, but again I have never been a great
cookie baker and although I’ve had more experience from when I was a kid baking
I still do not produce amazing bakery quality products. Cookies that are as
common as hamburgers and apple pie in America are not common here. You can now find cookies to buy at the store
that are a lot like chips ahoy, but finding soft bakery style cookies is
rare. Every time I bake “normal
American” baked items I get tons of comments about how they are so good or if I
invented them. Many Romanians think I
am this amazing baker; let me tell you it is a real boost for the self-esteem! After
that first time I think I gave out the recipe to two of the Romanian
translators that were here with the team.
Maybe a month later I made the cookies again for a family and they
wanted the recipe. A simple chocolate
chip cookie recipe is all new here! I
have given out this recipe many times as well as others. Oreo brownies are a favorite as well…just
brownies with crumbled Oreos in the batter and scattered on top.
Each week we go visit two orphanages and we bring them some
kind of dessert treat each time. We also
have a youth group at the house once a week that I try to make treats for as
well. I make a variety of treats: all
sorts of cookies, brownies, rice crispy treats, cupcakes, muffins, etc. They love it and I enjoy doing it, sometimes
they even fight over who got the most cookies.
The kids are very thin, so we like to try to fatten them up a bit. At one of the orphanages we bring them milk
as well to eat with their treats each week.
This year I’ve added making birthday cakes for the kids. They usually do not get a cake at the
orphanage. This might mean a lot of
cakes because we work with a lot of kids, maybe just one a month for those who
have a birthday that month. I’ve made several pies for friends and
neighbors as well. They have something
they call a pie, but it is nothing like our pies. Just rolled up dough with filling more like a
tortilla or crape with filling. One
reason I think the different treats are liked so much is the amount of sugar in
them. Their desserts generally do not
seem to be as sweet and who doesn’t like more sugar!
For months I’ve thought off and on that it would be neat to
come up with some kind of devotion or something to give out with a recipe when
people ask, then ask them to pass it along as well if they give the recipe to
someone else. I know one gal that has
given the chocolate chip recipe to her neighbor. If you have any ideas please let me know.
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