3 ingredients cookies

“Mm. Smells good. What's wrong? You only make those when you need to calm down.” Joan Watson in “Elementary” (Season 2, episode 16) when she enters the kitchen in the morning and Sherlock Holmes is just about to get the Yorkshire pudding out of the oven.

Sherlock Holmes is someone you wouldn't call normal. Naturally he's got some weird traits and characteristics. Cooking and baking is not my passion, although I can do some things that others actually like. So it's very strange for me that Sherlock Holmes in Elementary seemingly is baking to calm down and I now started to do the same, preferably using one recipe when I am frustrated, namely the following:

Ingredients:

1 cup Nutella (or other chocolate spread)

1 cup flour (or maybe a bit more)

1 egg

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 330 ° F (160 ° C)

Put all the ingredients in a bowl, mix with a spoon or hand-held mixer. (Those of you who use a spoon, you can easily make the recipe in the middle of the night without disturbing your room-mates or neighbours at all.) Take a small piece of the mass, make a ball out of that. Squish it flat and put it on a baking sheet with baking sheet. Repeat until dough is all used. Should make about 16 bits.

The cookies will rise a bit, so really keep it rather small and flat with a bit of distance between each.

Baking in the oven for about 5 to 10 minutes, until the cookies aren't that much wet and shiny anymore as they will be the first minutes. A bit shiny is absolutely fine.

Afterwards let them cool a bit. When they're right out of the oven the cookies are not only hot, but also fall apart fairly easily. Cooled down a bit they're harder.

The original recipe is with Nutella spread, which is available everywhere here in Germany. I have made the recipe already with white spread (which needs considerably more dough). My favourite cookies are with a caramel sea salt spread I was lucky to find at Edeka. I also used dark brownie spread and peanut butter as well (with and without peanut bits). For that one however I probably have used too much flour, because the cookies were rather dry for my taste. I personally don't like the Nutella-cookies as much as I do the Nusspli-cookies, a different kind of chocolate spread, which is available here.

Try it out. Let the spreads that are available in the shops in your area inspire you. You're welcome to write in the comments which spreads you tried and how you liked the cookies.

Efficient Language

Dear reader,

for a long time, I thought that written language should be "neat and tidy". Written to the best of one's knowledge and belief. Exceptions prove the rule and the exception is always the writer: that's me. My exception is, at least in english writing, my K-PAX way of writing. In chats I use full stop and comma as punctuation mark, but don't necessarily start a sentence with a capital letter. Although I do use capitalisation whenever it would be correct to do so in german spelling. In english chats it's easier to stay with use of small letters all the way through. What I hardly ever do in german or english chats is use abbreviations, except when I'm in a hurry and need to write fast, because I'm about to leave. But even then a written-out "bye" is still short enough.

A couple of years back there was an article in the newspapers and online about a student, who had written a whole essay in text shorthand (like "I C U" for "I see you"). The teacher was so shocked by this, that she wanted to remain anonymous. I still don't understand that even today. The teacher, in my opinion, had nothing to do with how the student had written her essay. (Here is an excerpt of the girl's essay for those interested.)

At first I was with many teachers and parents. This shorthand is unacceptable for an essay in school. What I think is really important is to know how to write the right way and adjust the writing to the situation.

Is short hand of that kind a degeneration, which especially in english is close to phonetic spelling, we know from first year students and which we would only accept from those? I'm no longer that sure about it as I had been when I first read of that essay.

I know Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character and therefore should not be a model for one's own, real behaviour or belief and yet:

When Watson gets more and more shorthand messages from Holmes in episode 5 of season 1 of "Elementary", she complains to him about that, "Your abbreviations are becoming borderline indecipherable. I don't know why, because you are obviously capable of being articulate."

Holmes explains to her that, "Language is evolving, Watson, becoming a more efficient version of itself. I love text shorthand. It allows you to convey content and tone without losing velocity."

Is he right, because he's Sherlock Holmes and I like Sherlock Holmes? Or is he right, because he's right? Is he right?

Until next blog,
sarah