The Bobbsey Twins

#22 The Super-Duper Cookie Caper by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1991.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

Freddie decides that he wants to get a new bike, and inspired by the school bake sale, he decides that he’ll make and sell cookies to raise the money. His grandmother makes really delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that everybody loves, so he plans to make and sell them. He persuades his twin, Flossie, to help him by promising her part of the money from the cookie sales. Their parents approve of the plan, and their mother offers to help them because neither of them has much experience with cooking.

When Freddie and Flossie go to sell the cookies in the park, they’re pretty popular. Everyone loves the cookies, and Freddie boasts about his grandmother’s secret recipe. Their last customer is a man who gives them a dollar with some kind of white powder on it, and he doesn’t seem to think much of the cookies. Freddie doesn’t care because everyone else likes them, and they’re making money.

There are some complications to selling cookies. First, Flossie has a sweet tooth, and Freddie has to keep stopping her from eating their stock herself. Then, a boy at school, Brian, announces that he’s going to set up a rival business in the park, selling brownies. Freddie gets the idea of offering broken cookies as free samples and selling orders of cookies door-to-door.

Nan and Bert start helping with the cookie-baking, but things don’t always go well in the kitchen. There are times when they forget ingredients or let the cookies burn. Then, the children realize that the card with the recipe on it is missing! They search the kitchen and realize that there is a chocolate smudge on the kitchen window. It looks like someone reached through the window and stole the recipe!

There are a few logical suspects. It could be Brian, hoping to cash in on the success of the cookie-selling. It could be their old nemesis, local bully Danny Rugg, who stole their free samples earlier and generally likes to mess things up for the Bobbseys. Then again, there is the mysterious man who keeps showing up at the park. The Bobbsey Twins find out that he owns his own bakery. To find out who the recipe thief is, Freddie decides to invent a trap. He tells everyone that his grandmother has given him her other secret recipe for super-duper cookies that’s even better than the first one. Who will take the bait?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

Sean and I were discussing earlier how later books in the New Bobbsey Twins series tended to focus more on the younger set of twins than the older Bobbsey twins and seem to involve lower-stakes mysteries. Earlier books in the series involved definite crimes, police matters, and strange phenomena. A stolen cookie recipe feels like much lower stakes. However, I thought this one was well-done for what it was. There are some definite suspects, enough to sow some doubt about who the recipe thief is. The actual thief is someone I suspected but not necessarily the most obvious suspect, and the thief’s motives do make logical sense, although I’m not sure (spoiler) any real adult would seriously consider that kind of business model. It sounds more like something a kid might do, and that’s partly what allows readers to doubt whether it’s a child or adult who took the recipe.

There is also a punchline to the story. There was one thing that I had guessed early on about the grandmother’s “secret recipe.” It’s not as “secret” as the kids think it is. I guessed that because, when I was a kid, one of my grandmothers always baked chocolate chip cookies. Those cookies were one of the highlights of going to her house. When we were little, my brother and I liked them so much that we guessed that she must have been a baker before she retired. When we were older, we found out that she’d actually been a bookkeeper and that her cookie recipe was just the Toll House recipe from the chocolate chip package. She made two versions, with and without nuts from the pecan tree in her backyard, but it was still the Toll House recipe. It’s a similar situation with the Bobbsey Twins’ grandmother’s secret recipe. The only thing the grandmother changed was the cooking time. Everyone just thought that the cookies were special because her grandchildren thought they were, and they convinced other people. Few things are as special as homemade cookies from your grandmother!