Filming Baking Stories

Annika C. and Jodi C., Commack High School volunteers, share their heartwarming memories of baking cookies over the phone with a senior named Isabella as part of our #dough4good recipe swap last year!

Jodi: Annika and I worked together for this Glamour Gals project. The project was Baking Stories where members of our Glamour Gals chapter were matched with a senior. This was our first true interaction with the seniors all year, so it was very exciting. Our first meeting with Isabella was over the phone, where she told us about her recipe for chocolate dipped cookies. She told us that it was “a simple recipe and it’s really tasty.” It was also a tradition for her and her family to make these cookies during Christmas.

Annika: I think that this was the most memorable experience I had this year in GlamourGals. Because of COVID, our chapter couldn’t visit any of the seniors in the nursing homes so it was really nice to meet a senior virtually and learn about her life while baking one of her favorite cookie recipes. Although Jodi and I had some trouble molding and shaping the cookies into little crescents and it ended up taking two hours, it was still really fun because we were all laughing, including Isabella, while telling us that she was glad she didn’t give us the harder recipe. Sometimes, filming the baking was a bit of a challenge but I’m glad we recorded it because I can always look back on that night.

Jodi: I never made cookies from scratch, and it was actually a really long process. There was a part where we had to compact our dough into small crescents and we took so long because our dough was crumbly. Isabella was laughing with us at how long we were taking because she kept asking us what number crescent we were on. It was actually really funny because it revealed our lack of baking experience. This experience, though, with Isabella and the other seniors allowed us to connect through Glamour Gals. I was excited to be part of a project again because we had not been active with the seniors besides letter making. We were really excited about our outcome, even though the process was apparently a difficult task for us. We were also really happy to try Isabella's cookies and tell her how good they were, even from us baking.

Check out the full Baking Stories episode here!