The Cookie Chronicles 2: The Russian Chapter

The Cookie Chronicles 2: The Russian Chapter (русская глава)
Soundous Louardiane
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Zoyeb needed cookies. But not just any cookies. Russian-style cookies. Ahmad was organizing an MSAxIAW lecture event about the history of Islam in the Russian empire and Zoyeb thought it would be a good idea to have some small baked Russian treats for the attendees and the guest lecturer (who SAID YES!!) So, he headed over to the grandma’s legacy group chat and issued a call to find the next MSA Cookie Warrior. This brave soul would be baking alongside MSA Cookie Queen Ainaa, with whom he had previously discussed the matter.

A few minutes later, Soundous responded saying that she might be able to contribute, but couldn’t confirm just yet. Following this, a barrage of puns on baking and Russian artistic culture rained down on the group chat. Zoyeb and Ahmad led the charge while Soundous pitched in occasionally. Some of their best work includes Ainaa Karenina (Anna Karenina), Recipes from Underground (Notes from Underground), The Sisters Caramelsov (The Brothers Karamazov), War and Treats (War and Peace), Baked Souls (Dead Souls), The Cooksacks (The Cossacks), What is to be Baked? (What is to be Done?), Baker of our Time (Hero of our Time), The Death of Ainaa Cookivych (The Death of Ivan Ilyich), Swan Bake (Swan Lake), and The Cookie Cracker (The Nutcracker).

Later that night, Soundous went down a rabbit hole of looking up Russian desserts and this put her in a baking mood. She therefore decided to commit to baking for the event. She asked Zoyeb, the MSA’s resident Russian expert, if he had any suggestions for what would be good to make. Unfortunately, his expertise did not extend to the Russian art of cookery, so he asked his Russian professor and came back the next day with “Qurabiya,” which is essentially a butter cookie with jam. He provided Soundous with a recipe in Russian. Soundous cannot read Russian, but Google translate came to the rescue. While reading the ingredients, she noticed two interesting quirks. Instead of simply saying “egg whites,” the ingredients list specified chicken egg white (as opposed to ostrich eggs or quail eggs perhaps?) It also indicated the quantity of egg white needed in grams, as opposed to a number of eggs. For future reference, this narrator would like to make it known that 25 g of (chicken) egg whites is more or less equivalent to the white of 1 (chicken) egg.

Meanwhile, Ainaa decided to try her hand at baking a Napoleon cake. Zoyeb warned her that his Russian professor had said that it was difficult and time-consuming to make, but he also added that if she were to try it, it would be one of her top 5 moments. Ainaa curiously asked what her top 4 moments were, but he never replied. This narrator will venture to say that winning the MSA Charity Week Bake-Off is one of them, but the rest will remain a mystery.
A few days before the event, Soundous decided to do a test batch, mostly to see how many cookies the recipe could produce, since it failed to mention this rather important detail. She got all her baking supplies and ingredients ready, pulled out the translated recipe on her laptop, and feeling all pumped up and excited, she began.

Two seconds later, she stopped. She had just read the first line of instructions: “Take the butter out of the refrigerator an hour or two in advance – let it become completely soft.” She looked at the unsoftened butter that she had just pulled out of the refrigerator 10 minutes ago and contemplated her options. She could either stop now and try again later, or she could carry on with her unsoftened butter. She stubbornly (and foolishly, this narrator might add) chose the second option, thinking that her hand mixer could speed up the process of making the butter soft and creamy. It did not. After fighting with the butter for about 10 minutes, she finally admitted defeat and left it to soften on its own for an hour. Let this be a lesson for all: read the full recipe before embarking on any cooking or baking activity.

When Soundous later returned to the kitchen, she found the butter softened and thus began baking in earnest. Everything went smoothly until she reached the stage of forming the cookies into their cute little flower shape (which coincidentally looked like the TMV logo, as Kenda later pointed out). Her mom had given her a cookie press, but the instructions had gone missing somewhere and Soundous had no idea how to use the contraption. She set it up, put the cookie dough in, and proceeded to play around with the lever in an attempt to press the dough onto the baking sheet (this narrator is at a loss as to why she did not simply look up how to use the tool on the internet). She fought with the press (or the torture device, as she affectionately started calling it) for about 5 minutes before it finally occurred to her to find a demonstration video on YouTube. While she was away, her mom, who had been watching her struggle the whole time, decided to give it a try.

Soundous happily returned to the baking (battle) field a few minutes later with her newly-acquired knowledge, only to find that her mom (an engineer) had completely dismantled the cookie press in her attempt to figure it out. The worst part is that she couldn’t reassemble it; one of the pieces simply wouldn’t go back to its original position. Soundous couldn’t even understand how her mom had managed to remove it in the first place. She tried to force it in for a while then gave up, leaving her mom to fend for herself. It took about half an hour, but her mom finally (one might even say miraculously) managed to fully reassemble the cookie press (alhamdullillah). But Soundous was yet again prevented from finishing up the cookies, as it was time for dinner.

After getting some food into her belly, Soundous was ready to face the cookies once more. She knew how the cookie press was supposed to work in theory, but actually using it was a completely different story. She tried. And tried. And tried. The cookie dough was coming out in all sorts of ways, but after a while, she more or less got the hang of it and produced about 50 cute-looking cookies.

Her second attempt the day before the event was far less chaotic. She learned from her mistakes and managed to produce about 120 cookies in a timely manner.  

Meanwhile, Ainaa was working on her Napoleon cake. She had decided to make a small one for the guest lecturer and an even smaller one for the event organizers. She found herself baking well into the night and finally finished at 2h30 AM. She topped the cake off with raspberries and thought it looked depressing. But after rearranging the raspberries a little and adding powdered sugar, she was satisfied with the end result (the powdered sugar ended up melting into nothingness on the raspberries, but the cake looked good nonetheless). She didn’t taste the Napoleon, but having tried both the puff pastry and custard cream that made it up, she logically concluded that, in theory, it should also taste good (this narrator can confirm that this was indeed the case).

Later that morning, Ainaa got into the car with her brother to drive to the university. She was hoping that the cake would survive her brother’s driving. It did not. The raspberries went flying and the cake barely made it out in one piece. Once on campus, Ainaa balanced 5 IAW trifold posters under one arm while pulling a trolley containing the Napoleon cake with the other. As she made her way across the street, a sudden, strong gust of wind made her lose her grip and the posters flew off. In her rush to get them back, Ainaa abandoned the trolley with the cake on the road and they almost got run over by cars. After this near-death experience, Ainaa fixed the cake up a little and it looked as good as new. The red raspberry marks on the cake box walls were the only indicators that a massacre had occurred.  

The event went well, alhmadullillah! Ahmad’s hard organizational work and Zoyeb’s support paid off. More than 40 people attended the lecture, ma sha Allah. Even the weather contributed to creating an authentic Russian winter experience by delivering freezing cold temperatures and strong winds that day. The guest lecturer gave a wonderful talk and the attendees asked many good questions.

Everyone enjoyed Soundous’ Qurabiya cookies, ma sha Allah. Many people praised their charming appearance and this made all the suffering she endured to shape them feel worthwhile. Ahmad’s mom later said that they were “very nice” and one person even asked if Soundous had a business and took baking orders! She took it as a beautiful compliment, despite Zoyeb’s claim that they wanted to know in order to call the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on her.
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Ainaa’s Napoleon cake was also a great success, ma sha Allah. The organizing team, after scrambling to acquire utensils (thank you to Safiyyah and Ainaa for getting them!) quite literally dug into the mini-version made for them and enjoyed it tremendously. The guest lecturer, who was very touched by the gesture, also loved her cake. She later wrote to Ahmad that “It is DELICIOUS!!!” (caps lock and all). And that’s how Cookie Queen Ainaa beat Napoleon and became the Empress of Cookies and Cakes.

Qurabiya Cookies

Napoleon Cake