Roslin, Scotland
Mid-august 2020

One windy day in August, Aurélie was picking vegetables from her Nanna’s garden when she noticed an owl landing on a fence close to her. Approaching the bird, she noted it had dark brown feathers with black specks all over. It was holding a letter. The curly haired girl carefully walked closer to the owl and reached for the parchment. As her hand hovered under the bird’s beak, the owl dropped the scroll of paper in her hand and started picking at his wings to clean them. Aurélie gave the seemingly friendly owl a light pat on the head as a thank you and opened the letter. Inside was a written invitation from Gargott Dunaid. It said he was the Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts and was very... hungry. Aurélie frowned her brows as she read the owl but she quickly realized that the professor wanted students to bake a treat for him and send it back with the delivery owl. So, the Scottish girl immediately gathered her plucked vegetables into a basket and walked inside, the owl stayed outside but moved to sit on a windowsill from an open window. That window was situated in the kitchen, where Aurélie was.

The young girl’s Nanna was out today to buy supplies for the bakery, thus, Aurélie had the kitchen to herself. She grabbed some cookbooks from a dusty shelf above the sink and flipped through the pages looking for a recipe. “Hm, what should I make? Cake? No, that will be dry by the time it gets there..” She continued searching until her eye landed on the basket she had taken in earlier from the garden. In it lied two round pumpkins, a couple of eggs from the chicken coop and fresh herbs. “Ooh, I can make pumpkin pies or something!” Aurélie realized she was just talking to herself since no one else was home but she turned her gaze to the owl sitting at the open window and said “You’ll help me, right Mr. Owl? Let’s start by gathering all ingredients for- uhm for what exactly- Pumpkin whoopie pies!" First, Aurélie looked for a book with the correct recipe and opened the book on that page, placed it in front of her on the kitchen island and read the ingredients out loud.

As Aurélie read the recipe before actually started baking, she noticed it didn’t seem much harder than what she had already been taught from her grandmother. “Shouldn’t be too hard. Let’s start.” First off, Aurélie preheated her oven to 350 degrees and while it warmed up, she mixed up the batter. To make that batter she mixed 3 cups of all-purpose flour, a teaspoon of salt, one teaspoon of baking soda and the same amount of baking powder together with pumpkin spices in a big bowl, she whisked until everything was combined, then put it aside. In a separate large bowl, the girl whisked together brown sugar, white granulated sugar and vegetable oil, one cup of each. Next, she needed to add pumpkin puree. She had fresh pumpkins so she quickly made a pumpkin puree from those and added three cups of it into the big bowl. Two eggs and vanilla extract, from fresh vanilla sticks preferably, all in the bowl as well and then Aurélie whisked it all until combined. The last part of making the batter included adding some flour on top of the mixture and whisking until all the flour was gone. By then, the oven was at temperature so Aurélie placed baking paper on an oven tray and with two spoons she made small cookie shaped dollops. She made sure they were an inch apart because they would get bigger as they baked. Once all the dough was formed into dollops, the girl placed the oven tray inside the hot oven and set the times for 10 minutes.

“Well Mr. Owl, what have you done to help?” The owl made a soft but high-pitched screeching noise and the girl replied: “You’re right, we should take a snack break. Do you eat fruit?” Aurélie walked closer to the owl and grabbed a ripe grape from the fruit bowl next to the window. The owl investigated the small piece of fruit but didn’t seem interested. “Okay, no fruit... How about some meat?” Aurélie walked to the fridge and came back to the window with a tiny teacup. It was filled with small chunks of unsalted bacon strips. “I suppose you eat mice and stuff so you probably like bacon too?” She sat the cup down in front of the owl and he investigated it. A few seconds later, the bird gladly picked up some of the meat chunks, threw them in the air and caught them in his beak. “So, you like bacon ha-ha.”

After spending about five minutes watching the owl eat his snack and Aurélie herself nibbling on some grapes, she continued baking. First, she cleaned the batter bowls and reused one of them to make to frosting in. With a spoon she threw in half a cup of unsalted butter and whisked it until it had a smooth texture. After adding eight ounces of cream cheese and beating it until it was combined with the butter, she heard the oven’s timer go off so she set down her frosting and checked on the cookies. Wearing oven mittens, she carefully poked a toothpick into a few of the cookies to see if they cooked on the inside. The girl was satisfied when the toothpick came out clean and then placed the tray on the kitchen island to cool. All that was left to make the frosting was adding powdered sugar, maple syrup and vanilla, then beating it until it was a smooth mixture and to put it in the fridge for thirty minutes to firm. After half an hour had passed, it was time to put the whoopie pies together.

The Scottish girl took two cookies and places them upside down on baking parchment. With a piping bag, she piped some cooled frosting on one cookie and placed the second cookie with the flat side on top of that, together it had a little burger-like appearance. Aurélie repeated this process until all the cookies were assembled and then took some orange sprinkles to decorate them. She only decorated half of the cookies with sprinkles because some people didn’t like them. The orange sprinkles covered up the white frosting sticking out the middle of the whoopie pies and added some attractive colour to them. “There! They are ready Mr. Owl! I will taste one before sending them though.” Aurélie grabbed a Pumpkin whoopie pie, took a bit bite from it and tasted perfection. “Mmm, mphatfs weally ghood hm-” She swallowed then ate the rest of the cookie and grabbed some tin foil to wrap the cookies in safely. She added some with sprinkles and some without. Aurélie wrapped it again in packaging paper and added a little note saying ‘Enjoy these Pumpkin whoopie pies from Aurélie Nimco, P.S. the bird didn’t do any work whatsoever.” With the package, the girl walked outside to where the owl was waiting and handed it the parcel. “There you go, you probably know where to go right?” The owl held on to the package, flapped its wings and flew off.