Scribblory Writers Library

My sister Guppy and I had that sudden urge to bake. Thus, just a few hours before midnight, we scrambled down the stairs and into the kitchen. Since it was ECQ and we were enveloped in boredom, we thought we’d try baking out. 

 

It started with a recipe, randomly lifted from somewhere on the Internet. A recipe for cornflake cookies since we had a surplus of Kellogg’s anyway. 

 

We stared at the page on my phone, not knowing where to start. Should the ingredients be measured first and separated in bowls? Or should we just measure and then dump everything in one bowl, so we won’t have too many wares to wash? Did our baker Tita once tell us that dry and wet ingredients should be mixed separately first?

 

“Whatever. Let’s just get on with it,” I said. 

 

Eventually, we found our flow – or whatever one might call that confused process. We checked the ingredients one at a time. The first one was flour, so we pulled an old sack from the shelves. “Good thing we have this. It’s almost expired,” Guppy remarked. We measured this and poured the contents of the cup onto a large silver bowl. We did the same with the baking powder, salt, and cornflakes. 

 

“Time for the wet ingredients!” I said. “What’s the first one?”

 

“Eggs,” Guppy replied as she lifted her head from my phone. 

 

“I think they’re on the shelf under the table with the toaster.”

 

She went there to fetch some, but alas. “Ate! Ubos na ang itlog! (We don’t have eggs!)”

 

“Ha? E nahalo na natin lahat ng ingredients e! Sayang naman! (What? But we already mixed all the ingredients!)”

 

Our enthusiasm for our first baking venture was snuffed out just like that. We stared at that hopeless mix of powder. It was a sand mix, dry like concrete. It did not deserve to be called batter.

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“What if we add milk? Maybe that’ll make it stickier?” I suggested.

 

“No, it won’t work. We’ve failed,” Guppy groaned.

 

But I poured in milk anyway and hoped that would do the trick. Lo and behold, it did not. We ended up with a runny mass with floating lumps of aggregated sugar. It would not hold, and it would only spread out on the cookie sheet like water. It did not deserve to be called batter. 

“What if we add all-purpose cream?” I asked.

 

“No. Let’s not waste any more ingredients,” Guppy grunted. 

 

But I poured in some cream anyway and hoped that it would do the trick. Lo and behold, it did. It was crumbly, and it disintegrated with the least measured movement. But it held and it could be formed into cookies – well, at least, somehow. Yes, this can pass as a batter. Alright, we dub thee batter. 

 

We squinted our eyes, looking through the oil-splattered glass door of the oven. The bumps slowly turned brown and rose a little in height. Soon, we drew the sheet out. 

 

Uncontrolled pinches made rounds crumble, so we had to be careful with how we handled them. We took our first bites, and it wasn’t so bad. Salty, sure. But it was surprisingly edible! We shared some with our parents and our other siblings. Soon the batch was finished.

 

The rounds somehow looked like cookies, somehow felt like cookies, and somehow tasted like cookies. Yes, they were really cookies. How viscous batter of inedible ingredients could form into a snack, it was a wonder. 

 

“That wasn’t so bad!” I said. “I mean, it wasn’t good either, but it wasn’t so bad!”

 

“Whatever, we’ll do better next time,” Guppy said. 

 

And so my sister and I would bake some more during the quarantine period. Our next attempts thankfully turned out better – from empanadas to three-layered cakes. They were all delicious, but the crumbly cornflake cookies would always be memorable to me. 

 

The experience of the unknown, the surprise in the chaos, and the joy of unexpected victories. These were fun.