Cooking With Cole – Episode 2

🎵 Cole the Cooker! Can she bake it? Cole the Cooker! Yes, she can!🎵

Hello again Cookers! Welcome back to Cooking With Cole! As you know, I am Nicole the Cooker. Hmm . . . I need to get a tag that says that. I’ll ask Mommy about that. 

Anyhow, every doll (and human) needs something nutritious to start the day, so today we will be making . . . . . . . . . Granola! Yaaay! This is a variation of my granny’s recipe, so I hope it works. 

ForestPoodle88 will provide commentary on how to craft this (as she did for me) and I will make the actual thing, which you can also do with real food. 

So, go wash your hands while I give you the ad break, and then we will start! Like last time, I already washed mine. 

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A catapult, a back scratcher and a balance-thing all in one?

A club to hit thieves with? A floor scrubber and a fly trap?

Then I have just the thing for you! 

This amazing tool called a ‘Hairbrush’! It is exactly what you need and is sure to please everyone, even your mom! She needs her floors cleaned, right? Available for a limited time on nicolescookingads.com.

Back again? Let’s continue!

Here are the ingredients that you should have. If you do not, just put in something else – granola is very, very, forgiving. Use what you’ve got!

 You will need: rolled oats, shelled pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, sliced almonds, shredded coconut, dried cranberries, butter, honey, molasses, salt and milk. Whew! That seems like a lot of ingredients. Oh, and you’ll also need a metal or wooden spoon-like thing, a large roasting pan or something like that, and some measuring cup-things and table- and tea- spoon things. 

I put everything in nice bowls just for the fun of it, but Auntiy FlamyFox says I’m going to accidentally put the cranberries in before the granola’s baked. I’m going to prove her wrong!

First, add 4 cups of rolled oats to the pan. 

(Nicole’s are ‘hand-cut oats’ – very annoying to cut! I coloured thin cream paper with brown and yellow pencil crayons, stacked it in stacks of 4-8 papers (depending on how tired my fingers were) and cut small, mostly oval shapes. If you are sure that using real oats will not attract mice, you could use those, but I was a bit worried, so I did not. It is NOT highly suggested to cut oats, but I really wanted doll granola. If you share my opinion, go ahead, though it is not something to be done all at once.)

Then you need to add 1 cup of the pumpkin seeds. Actually, I don’t like these much, but – protein! And they make the granola look nice, which could be really important!  If you don’t have these, add a cup of something else, or add an extra cup of a different ingredient. 

(I made these using clay. I mixed bright green clay with a bit of browny grey, rolled it into a long snake, approximately 1/8 of an inch wide. I then flattened the snake, cut it into sections about 3/8 of an inch long and shaped the ends of each section into points. I made close to 50. A very good thing to do while listening to music or watching TV (not that I do that often). Bake the clay when they are all made, unless you used air dry clay.)

Now, add a cup of sliced almonds or another chopped nut. I wanted walnuts, but Mommy said No way. :(

(For these I glued 2 pieces of cardstock together, and coloured it a faint brown-yellow. I cut them into rectangles approx. 1 centimetre by 1/2 centimetre then curved off the corners. Less tiring that the oats, but make sure you have glued the two pieces together well.)

Okay, I am getting a little impatient so . . . I am going to mix it all up now! I’ll add the other stuff in a second.

See? I’ve even got a recipe card! Now, what’s next? Shredded coconut. But, wait a second, I didn’t add the sunflower seeds yet! Oh, no, what did I do?

Psst, Nicole – you’ve been following the recipe out of order!

Ooops! *promptly drops the recipe card in the granola*

Okay, so what you’re actually going to add is half (1/2) a cup of sunflower seeds. 

(These are made the same as the pumpkin seeds, I just used the greyish clay and did not flatten the snake.)

Next, you need to add the shredded coconut. My favourite part! You need a full cup of this! 

Nicole, you’ve made a mess with the coconut!

Yeah, I know. I was going to eat that. 

But then there won’t be enough in the granola.

Oh. I never thought of that. 

(For the coconut I just crumpled white cardstock, cut it into small strips and – voila! Done!)

Add 1/2 a cup of sesame seeds.

Mommy! There’s only a little bit left in the bowl! Can I add it in too?

Of course, that’s how granola works. It’s not a exact science.

(The sesame seeds are cream coloured size 10 seed beads. Any small white-ish beads should work.)

The next step is to add half a cup of dried cranberries or raisins. Oh wait! Don’t add those in!

Aww, man. I didn’t succeed in proving Auntie FlamyFox wrong! I nearly did add the cranberries. 

Okay, now you can mix everything together. Ooops, I’ve made a mess.

Quick! I’ve gotta clean it up before Mommy notices!

The next part is the sauce-thing, but I made mine a while ago and put it in Emilia’s jug. I’ll just tell you what you have to do. You have to melt 1/2 cup of butter, 1 cup of honey, 2 tablespoons of molasses, 1 teaspoon of salt (regular, I guess) and 2 tablespoons of milk. Put all of this in a sauce pan and ‘heat it until it bubbles’. That’s what it says on the back of the recipe card. 

Pour the sauce over the granola and give it a good old mixing. 

Also, ignore the eggs on the counter. Sophie finally went out and collected Wilhelmina’s eggs from the past few days. 

Get a big person to put the pan in the oven at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake it for 45 minutes, but you have to stop it every 15 minutes and . . . 

. . . . stir it. Now your granola is done!

Never mind, I forgot the dried cranberries! I really can’t get them right.

Wait for it to fully cool, then you can finally add the half a cup of dried cranberries!

(The cranberries are red-ish coloured size 6 seed beads (so, bigger than the sesame seeds). You could also have raisins if you have brown beads, but oddly enough, I don’t.)

And that’s all there is to it! Grab some bowls and spoons and eat some delicious granola! (Oh, and, you now have the nice smell of warm granola throughout the house.)

Enjoy your granola and see you next time on Cooking With Cole!

Nicole the Cooker is signing off!

*   *   *   *   *

This took a lot longer to film/shoot than I thought it was going to. Nicole wanted to do it one day, but then I had to clean the ‘dresser’ (currently full of stuff, while the clothes sit in a bin) so that she could use it as a counter. And then the next day I wanted to do it, but Nicole insisted she needed a picture for the window, instead of just the purple wall. So I coloured a nice tree. Finally, we got it done, in bits and pieces, and here we are!

You’ll notice Nicole was wearing a different apron. Nope, still not her own! I told her she had to have at least three episodes before I made that. Her hair is also kinky from it being a bit braided, so no it’s not normally like that, but I like the look.

Yeah, I had to wear Chilly the polar bear’s apron. It fit fine and it went well with my outfit, but the oats kept on sticking to it. Crocheted aprons are not best!

One more episode, Nicole! 

Any suggestions for what she bakes/cooks next time? Did you like how it was also sort of a craft? (I meant for it to be more of a craft, but I decided no one in their right mind would want to cut out that many oats. Let’s just say this – when I can’t find an easy way to do a craft, I do the hard way anyways! Next time it will be a better craft.)

– ForestPoodle88 and Nicole