3 ingredient cookies variations

In 2017 I wrote a blog post with a cookie recipe I called 3 ingredients cookies, although the internet knows it more under the name of "Nutella cookies". I myself made them with Nutella only once, but did them many times with all sorts of spreads.

The following pictures were not taking this January, they are older. I wanted to share some variations I made with you anyway.

In May 2019 I found pistaccio spread:

That same day I also made my favourite cookies with friends with caramell sea salt spread (the brown ones). I did announce that there is "Bounty cream" to those friends to get a variation of coconut cookies. I blieve those versions of spreads like Bounty/coconut, Mars, Mily Way and the like are just temporarily available, I haven't seen them a lot lately, only the occassional Mars one maybe. I didn't find "Bounty Cream" that day, but a similar suitable coconut spread (the white cookies):

Another posibility for cookies are with M&Ms, but they are big and large (make sure to stick the M&Ms well into the cookies, otherwise they may drop out and away from the cookies during the cooking time in the oven:

I found that smarties are more practical, because they are smaller:

There's a brand available here called "Chocolate Symphony". A dark chocolate version can be seen here:

They have all sorts of variations, mostly in 200 g jars, which is just what you need for the cookies. The spread is easy to get out of the jar, the labels can be taken off the jars very easily with no traces of the glue left, which I think makes them great to reuse. Check those out and get them, if you can. I always do.

Here's the webite of the company: https://brinkers.com/brands/chocolate-symphony/

Leave me a comment what kind of variation you'd like to try or have tried already.

Banana oat cookies

 Ingredients:

2 bananas

100 g oats (2 cups)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Peel the bananas and mash them up in a bowl with a fork.

Add the oats and mix it all together.

Make small balls and put them on a baking sheet (press down on the balls to flatten them, if you like) and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Puff pastry rolls

Ingredients:

1 roll of puff pastry

1 pot of sour cream (or cream cheese with spices)

100 g (2 cups) grated cheese

1 package of diced bacon

Alternatives/variations:

As an alternative to the bacon salmon works great, too. There's a ramson cream cheese here in Germany that I think is a nice combination with that. I haven't tried other variations personally. Write in the comments, what combinations you tried.

Shopping tip:

Unless you're grating your own cheese, they will sell 200 g packages of cheese in Germany only. So might want to think of doubling the amounts and make one with bacon and another with salmon.

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (392 degrees F)

Roll out the puff pastry and first spread the sour cream on it. Make sure to cover the edges, too, otherwise the rolls on either end of the roll will be "slim".

Next spread the bacon/salmon on it.

Lastly put on the grated cheese.

Now you're going to roll it. There are 2 variations: Rolling it from the short end will give you fewer rolls, but they'll be bigger. About 10. Or 2: Roll up the long side. It's a bit more tricky, because it's longer, but it'll give smaller and more rolls. About 16.

I personally prefer smaller rolls and cut mine about the size of the tip of my thumb to my first knuckle. Which usually is about 16-18 rolls. Place the rolls on a baking pan with some space between them. They will rise.

Put the rolls in the oven for about 15 minutes, depending on how brown you want them to be.

The rolls can be eaten hot or cold.

Enjoy!

Rolls with diced bacon:

 

Salmon rolls:

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.

Fortune cookies

Dear reader,

I'm always at certain friends on New Year's Eve and I always like to get a small present with me for that circumstance. Now I always get a bunch of glow lights and the year before last and the year before that I had made caramelised nuts. Years before that I once thought I could make fortune cookies myself. Judging from the pure recipe, they're relatively easy to make. My sister, who is more experienced with baking, helped me dividing egg white and yolk as well as getting the cookies on the sheets and removing them. The really difficult part with that is that you have to work fast, because the dough on the one hand has to be baked to a certain degree to be able to shape the circles you put on the sheet to their typical fortune cookie shape and of course you've got to put the slip of paper in as well. On the other hand the fresh cookies, when they come right out of the oven are of course very hot and if you wait for too long, they get hard and you can't quite shape them anymore.

I don't remember anymore which recipe I actually had used, but the following one from allrecipes.com is an example of how it's typically done. I spare me copying the recipe here and just give you the link instead:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/9684/fortune-cookies-i/

I'd suggest looking up the fortunes ahead of everything else and either writing them by hand or on your computer and printing and cutting them out. I forgot which fortunes I used. I'm certain there are many pages with fortunes for fortune cookies to be found with your preferred search engines. Just look for fortunes that you like best.

I still have a small note on my cookies though: of course I wanted to make a test run (or rather test baking) before my visit with the friends. So I made a few cookies just for us as family, but already with the fortunes in the cookies. So I had a small bowl with cookies sitting in the living-room and my father, who didn't know about the cookies, saw them and put one whole one as it was in his mouth. I cried out in horror that there was a slip of paper in! He fumbled with his finger to get the paper out of his mouth and threw it in the waste without a further glance on the paper. After that experience I told the friends and everyone, who grabbed one of the cookies on New Year's Eve, that they have a slip of paper in them. Contrary to my father, the friends took it for granted and ate the cookie accordingly with caution. ;-)

Until next blog,

sarah