by Hannah from India.

‘’I would like to bake cookies with the volunteers’’ read the notification in my phone, with excited eyes I read the invitation from Frauke for a traditional cookie baking experience at The Volunteer House. I knew cookie baking was a Christmas tradition in Germany and what I also knew was Frauke was a great baker! Our WhatsApp group was soon filled with messages planning for the day.

Back home I always baked cakes with my cousins every Christmas, but it wasn’t professional, most of the time we would end up eating burnt cakes with chocolate frosting, but the memories made during those days was priceless! similarly, I knew baking this time at The Volunteers House would last as a precious memory too!

Frauke arrived at The Volunteer House with bags full of baking tools and fresh ingredients, our baking session started with wide smiles and warm glasses of gluehwine (a traditional drink in Germany only available in the christmas time, some kind of mulled wine usually made with red wine along with various mulling spices, you can have it with or without alcohol), we began to roll out the cookie dough cutting it into various shapes and sizes. The baked cookies smelled so fresh so yum, our kitchen looked and smelled like a professional bakery as we made different sorts of delicious cookies.

Within a span of 3 hours we managed to bake 2 different sorts of cookies and a luscious chocolate honey cake. The joy seeing the cakes rise in the Owen bought out the kid in us.

The Christmas songs in the background, sung in the same tune but different languages, the warm biscuits on the chilled icing, the joy, laugh and cheer during the whole baking was just another memory to cherish.