An Introduction to A Peek Into the Pantry!

Welcome to the blog from Kaya, Felicity, Kirsten and Emily!

So I have a confession to make: although I like baking, I’m not a very good cook. In fact, I used to kind of hate cooking. Anything that was more complicated than heating something up in the oven was often an involved, messy and sometimes dangerous process, and let’s just say I wasn’t too enthusiastic to try anything new when it seemed like I might actually set the house on fire one day.

But then I had an idea. I might not know much about cooking, but I do know a lot about American history, which is definitely partially because of my early affinity for a certain historical doll line. I thought what if I combined these interests with cooking and used the dolls, their cultures and their points in history to encourage me to try new recipes, and hopefully learn a little bit in the process?

Thus, A Peek Into the Pantry was born! In each post, I’ll:

- Pick a recipe (or a few I suppose, if I’m feeling particularly ambitious) that has something – no matter how obscure – to do with one of my American Girl Dolls

- Give a bit of historical background into the dish if I can find something about it

- Show work in progress pictures and the final result of the recipe

- And finally, a review on how it tastes!

Of course, not every dish is going to be historical, and the ones that are and come from a pre-electricity period aren’t going to be cooked the traditional way – I don’t have a baking oven in my fireplace to cook pies! But I’ll try to get as close to authentic as possible, and I’ll explain the differences as best I can if and when they come up. I’ll also try to cook recipes from the American Girl cookbooks and cooking studios when I can get my hands on them, but that’s definitely not all that’s going to go on here.

If you've got any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment on one of the posts, or email me at intothepantry@gmail.com, and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible!

- Gwen