No. 4

Date: Sept. 24, 2015

Perhaps Oreos are the closest thing to Western-style cookies
that a Chinese supermarket carries. But you won't find
flavors like this in America: peach and green grape!

Status: Licking my fingers

 
              Sitting in the office at the English school, I glanced at my work schedule. I had something labelled “bake cookies” coming up in forty-five minutes. Next to “bake cookies” was David’s name and the room number. Great! I would get to observe how David did the monthly cookie-baking birthday celebration! 
              David walked by my desk. “All ready to bake cookies?” 
              "Yeah, I guess so."
              He nodded. “Got a recipe?”  
              “What? I…I’m baking the cookies? I’m leading it?” 
              Ok, I shouldn’t panic. I used to bake cookies all the time back home. I was a pro at tweaking the recipe on the back of the Nestlé Toll House chocolate chip bag to get the best chewy chocolate chip cookies known to mankind. I could handle a little birthday cookie demo. 
              David laughed. “Yeah, you’d better be leading it because I can’t bake at all.” 
              “Ok, well, where are the ingredients?” 
              He took me to the media room where there was a toaster oven and a table full of baking ingredients. I picked up a mangled paper bag, and a white puff dissipated into the air. Flour. That’s important.  There was also a roll of tin foil, a plastic bag of unrefrigerated eggs, and what may have been baking powder or baking soda. And I saw some milk
              “Oh, we don’t need milk,” I said. 
              “Really?” said David. “There’s no milk in cookies?” 
              “Not in regular chocolate chip ones.” 
              “Ok, so what else do you need?” 
              “Umm…” I hesitated, wondering how unreasonable the request I was about to make would sound in China. “Well, some measuring cups would be nice. And we’ll need sugar, brown sugar, and chocolate chips. And…vanilla?” 
              David frowned. “Hmm. Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” 

Lest you assume that a Chinese supermarket is just like a
Western supermarket, allow me to point out that some
aisles in a Chinese supermarket resemble a zoo aquarium
more than any kind of grocery store in the West.

              I had absolute faith that if anyone could find Western-style food products in China on such short notice, it would be David. He left, and I set to sorting through the existing ingredients and supplies. There were paper cups, cupcake liners, and two small microwavable glass bowls with lids—one of which was filled with frozen butter! I don’t know if you’ve ever made cookies before, but it doesn’t really work with frozen butter. I snatched it up and checked my watch. At that moment a Chinese TA came into the room. 
              “Is everything ok?” she asked. 
              “Well, it’s fine,” I said. “But is there any way we could heat up this butter? I need it to be soft to make the cookies.” 
              “Oh, I knew you needed butter,” she said, “but I didn’t know what kind you needed. I can heat it.” 
              “Thank you,” I said, wondering vaguely which Chinese recipe called for the frozen solid “kind” of butter. 
              I headed back to the office to look up Nestlé’s cookie recipe online. It was easy. I had made it countless times. But I never used nuts, always added extra chocolate chips, threw in a touch more baking soda and vanilla, and watched the baking time carefully so they’d be done but not hard. I used my phone to snap a photo of the recipe, and I returned to the media room. I spotted the glass butter container on the table. I tried to pick it up, but it was now scalding hot. The butter inside was completely melted. This wasn’t the right “kind” of butter either. I gingerly wrapped a towel around it and returned it to the freezer. 
              Soon David arrived with a bag, which he emptied onto the table. 
              “So, I couldn’t find chocolate chips,” he said. “But I figured we could just break these up.” He opened a container full of individually-wrapped milk chocolate Dove bars. 
              “Ok,” I agreed. 
              “And no vanilla or brown sugar. But here’s the white sugar.” He popped open the plastic bag. The sugar granules inside looked suspiciously fine. 

The Chinese may not be into chocolate chip cookies, but their
moon cakes more than make up for it!

              “Are you sure that’s sugar?” I asked, looking for some English on the label. 
              “No idea,” David said bluntly. He stuck his finger into the bag and then in his mouth. “Tastes sweet.” 
              “Did you find measuring cups?” 
              “Oh, man, I totally forgot about measuring cups! I’m sorry!” 
              “It’s ok,” I said, glancing at the paper cups on the table. “I can manage, but the cookies may be a little…strange.” 
              David made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Hey, however they turn out, these are going to be the best cookies these kids have ever tasted. Most of them have never had a cookie before.” 
              I laughed. “Great. Very encouraging!”

             

  

              Two dozen children—aged anywhere from two to ten—had settled into their seats beneath balloons and a paper “Happy Birthday” banner. Now four dozen eyes were on me. 

              “We need one and a half cups,” I said holding a paper cup, “of sugar.” My mind reeled as I said “sugar.” It just didn’t look like sugar. Still, I got the students to repeat it after me, motioning toward the bag of something sweet. 

              “Now one cup of butter.” The butter was still piping hot and just barely filled the paper cup. 

              From the back of the room, David shook his head as if to say, “Lucky we had enough.” 

              “Now, mix!” I said, demonstrating the action. I let the students try mixing, encouraging them to say “mix”! 

              Soon we’d added everything in this fashion except for the Dove chocolate. I considered the little bars for a moment. I looked up at David. “I’m going to teach them the word ‘crush.’” 

              Holding aloft a wrapped bar, I yelled, “Crush!” and smashed it into the palm of my hand with my fist. Now here was an English word the kids enjoyed. Soon I was mobbed with children grabbing for their own bar to crush. Several minutes later, we had emptied chocolate chunks of varying sizes into the bowl, and a final chorus of “mix” finished the dough. One boy sneezed as he mixed, adding his own special ingredient to the dough. 

              We practiced counting as I dropped spoonfuls of the sticky stuff onto makeshift “pans” which David had created out of tin foil, and into the toaster oven the cookies went. But with two rounds of cookies needing to bake, I had at least twenty minutes to kill, and not much of a plan. 

              How about a song? Row, Row, Row Your Boat seemed simple enough. With some help from the TA, I arranged some students in rowing formation and tried to teach them the song, encouraging them to row in rhythm. There is no better way to say this: the entire concept was a disaster. The result was chaos and confusion for the children and frustration and sweat for me. 

              I think David was the one to suggest Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. This went over much better and kept the children active and hearing English. But despite the fact that I had repeated the song several times, each time getting faster, it barely took up five minutes. 

              While I checked on the cookies, David and the TA organized a variation on musical chairs for the kids. The game went over very well. I obviously needed to expand the arsenal of activities that I could pull out at a moment’s notice. 

              When the first pan of cookies was done, I noticed how little they had spread out. Apparently mystery ingredient number one had been baking powder, not baking soda like the recipe called for. I tasted a small cookie. The texture was somewhere between cookie and cake, and there was a cloying, artificial aftertaste to it. Mystery ingredient number two was definitely not sugar. It was something like Splenda. Still, I remembered what David had told me: “These are going to be the best cookies these kids have ever tasted.” 

              As we began to hand out the cookies, I saw that he was right. The kids didn’t care that the cookies were made with artificial sweetener, baking powder, melted butter, and uneven chocolate chunks, and without vanilla, brown sugar, or measuring cups. To these kids who had never had a chocolate chip cookie before and whose culture didn’t involve dessert as its own course in a meal, these were the best cookies ever. Happy birthdays, September kids!