Out at a restaurant with a very special guest at the table next to us

 

vu

I had a proverbial screw loose (and lost it)

 

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.

M&M: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I like and respect Roald Dahl as a writer and enjoy watching the movie “Mathilda” several times and I did enjoy reading “The BFG” even as an adult. Maybe I should some day read his book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, on which this movie from the year 2005 is based on.

To be honest, I don't like the movie much. It's predictable from the start and the whole conception of it is just purely annoying. A typical Tim Burton movie with the “usual suspects”: with Danny Elfman scoring the music, like he did with almost every Tim Burton movie, we also have Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka in the lead role and Helena Bonham Carter (then still fiancé of Tim Burton) as mother of Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore). Charlie's family is so poor, they barely have enough just to eat. Still it's Charlie of all people, who gets one of the rare golden tickets. The golden ticket enables Charlie and other children to visit Willy Wonka in his famous chocolate factory and get a tour there, one which none of them will ever forget. In the end even Willy Wonka, living estrangd from his father, learned something. Yawn. In fact at the end I had the feeling that the movie should have been called “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, because it was somehow most of the time about Willy Wonka, his life style and his factory and not about Charlie Bucket.

While nobody would wish for anybody to grow up in such poor circumstances that Charlie has to be in. However the other kids that get the remaining golden tickets are rotten and spoiled. Each of the spoiled kids will get into a nasty situation according to their character. Charlie is the only one getting away from that tour in a positive way, since he's already punished enough by living in the poor family situation he grew up in.

The movie respectively the factory has jarring colourings in a typical Tim Burton way. As a fan of Danny Elfman's music I listened to it several times before I saw it was on tv one day. I don't know if my parents knew what the movie was about or that it was a Tim Burton movie respectively some parts would be musical songs. I don't know what bothered my parents the most. In any case they turned it off soon. I watched it alone some time later. As I watched it, I had the feeling Danny Elfman's music held everything together and especially in the factory it seemed that they were moving from one song to the next. I liked the music. Especially the first tracks of the album (1-5) are funny and diverse like the characters they're about (“Wonka's Welcome Song”, “Augustus Gloop”, “Violet Beauregarde”, “Veruca Salt”, “Mike “Teavee”). Danny Elfman sang the lyrics to the songs himself and as he reported himself, as he composed the songs, he had laughing fits so hard that his wife checked in on him a couple of times,to see if everything was ok. I can very much imagine that. The tracks are “quirky”, upbeat and dynamic. With “Augustus Gloop” there is however already a revelation that nothing really bad will happen to the kids. Of course not! It's a children's movie and as rotten as the kids may be, nobody wishes them anything terrible („But don't, dear children be alarmed, Augustus Gloop will not be harmed, Augustus Gloop will not be harmed“). The tracks 13-15 (“ Loompa Land”, “The Boat Arrives”, “The River Cruise”) and 18 (“The River Cruise – Part 2”) are pretty dark tracks, by the way. So it's by all means not all just cheery music. I'm listening to the soundtrack again after a long time as I'm writing this blog post.

I would almost suggest to not watch the movie and just listen to the soundtrack. Of course you won't see the kids that way or in what kind of situations they get into and the lessons they'll learn. By only listening to the soundtrack you will also not know the ending and what happened to Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket after the tour. I like Helena Bonham Carter, who can only be seen shortly as the mother and I also like Freddie Highmore. Still, I personally would prefer listening to the soundtrack happily and repeatedly, which I find much more entertaining by itself with the sounds and the lyrics, than watching this quirky, predictable movie. Probably most people will want to watch the movie after listening to the soundtrack anyway. To that I can only say this: Watch it at your own risk!

On the way to the Christmas party...

The jaw of a co-worker dropped and she was literally speechless when I showed her this picture I took on my way to the Christmas party:

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: