{"id":470,"date":"2026-09-16T12:41:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T12:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thinking-about.de\/?p=470"},"modified":"2026-10-01T23:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T23:34:31","slug":"zen-und-die-kunst-des-plaetzchenbackens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinking-about.de\/en\/zen-und-die-kunst-des-plaetzchenbackens","title":{"rendered":"Zen and the Art of Baking Cookies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Or: Why Enlightenment Might Smell of Vanilla<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The Way of Zen\" by Alan Watts is still lying on the kitchen counter where I left it after reading this morning. I hope it is far enough away from the scene of my activities, because things may get a little dusty.\n\nI believe the book was responsible for the notion that came over me later \u2014 not planned, not thought out, but seemingly out of nowhere, and right there in the middle of the supermarket:\n\nVanillekipferl!<\/p>\n

Those delicate, fragrant little crescents from my childhood, still warm from the baking tray. Earlier that morning, I had been reading about what Mr Watts calls mo chih ch\u2019u: the art of not obstructing what wants to flow of its own accord. And so, instead of Baumkuchen bites and miniature Stollen, Bellasan, almonds, spelt flour and vanilla sugar found their way into my trolley.\nIt was an impulse I had no wish to argue with. Enlightenment, it seemed, had chosen to announce itself this year in the form of a biscuit vision.<\/p>\n

Now I am standing at the kitchen table, wreathed in flour dust as though in some metaphysical fog, and thinking, or perhaps not thinking so much as sensing, that the path to peace of mind may not lead through meditation alone. It may also lead through butter, vanilla sugar and the patient work of one\u2019s own hands.<\/p>\n

A Kipferl Need Not Be Perfect: On Control and \u201cwu-wie\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aunt Toni\u2019s gloriously delicious recipe? Impossible to obtain. So I improvise.\n\nA sufficient amount of butter. The only question is: how much is \u201csufficient\u201d? Precisely enough for the dough to feel right beneath my fingers, supple and gentle. Ground almonds, spelt flour, sugar, no egg. It does not need one.\n\nThe ingredients come together in the large mixing bowl and turn into something new, the precise composition of which I soon stop consciously keeping track of. Watts would say that I have entered the state of wu-wie, of non-action, which, paradoxically, is the most effective kind of action.<\/p>\n

And here the first secret reveals itself: the less I try to control things, the better the dough becomes.\n\nThe moment I begin to optimise, perhaps a little more almond, perhaps more flour, or was that already too much, the dough grows stubborn and resistant. Too much butter and it becomes too soft, too sticky, unwilling to bend into the shape I had intended for it.\n\nInstead, I have to get to know it. Experience it. Feel what it needs.\n\nIn this case, probably fifteen minutes in the fridge.\n\nWhich gives me just enough time to clear away the worst of the chaos and preheat the oven in peace.<\/p>\n

After the brief wait, I begin shaping the Kipferl with flour-dusted hands. My fingers recognise a texture that cannot be expressed in grams. Forgive me, Aunt Toni, but yes, it can be done.\n\nThis is not carelessness. It is another form of attention. One that listens, although strictly speaking it feels its way into the dough, rather than forcing it into submission.\n\nNo crescent looks quite like the one beside it. One is a little broader, another more slender; some have sharper tips than others. Had I tried to perfect them, the dough would simply have grown too soft again.\n\nInstead, they lie side by side on the greased baking tray, each with its own small imperfection, and together they form an image of quiet, unplanned harmony.\n\nThis is wu-shih, artless artistry, mastery not of the extraordinary but of the perfectly ordinary. My hands seem to know, quite spontaneously, where each one belongs.\n\nAnd I find myself absurdly pleased with them.<\/p>\n

The Golden Stillness of the Oven: Letting Things Happen as \u201cmo chih ch\u2019u\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

The open oven bathes me in warm air as I slide the tray inside. The old interior light is yellow and soft. The door closes again, the oven hums quietly, and all at once I am entirely superfluous.\n\nFree.<\/p>\n

This is the moment when it happens. In this golden, empty interval, it dawns on me that there is genuinely nothing I can do, and nothing I need to do.\n\nIt is as though time has lost its hold on me.\n\nI lean against the counter and simply am, my eyes fixed on whatever is taking place inside the oven.<\/p>\n

The scent slips out through the smallest gaps and fills the kitchen with a presence that is almost physical. There is already the smell of toasted almonds and butter, a fine, hovering aroma finding its way into every corner.\n\nWarmth spreads through the room.\n\nFor a moment, I close my eyes and let it wrap itself around me like a blanket.<\/p>\n

Here, in this period of waiting, part of the truth about what self-care might actually mean begins to reveal itself.\n\nIt is not exhausted by what wellness magazines would have us buy. Not the revitalising face mask, not the relaxing bath, not productivity extracted from a period of rest.\n\nRather, it is a kind of dissolution of the boundary between myself and what is happening.\n\nThe oven works. A raw crescent of dough slowly transforms into a small, beautifully rounded delicacy. Why this happens, which chemical processes are involved, is suddenly completely beside the point.\n\nAnd therein lies the freedom: in not having to understand. In simply being here. In witnessing something become.<\/p>\n

Watts speaks of the need to \u201cforget\u201d oneself and one\u2019s striving. That is precisely what I am experiencing.\n\nI am no longer the person who has to achieve something.\n\nI am simply the one who waits, breathes and is.\n\nSelf-care, as it reveals itself to me in this moment, is not a state one pursues according to plan, squeezed into laboriously protected slots in the diary so that one might optimise oneself and one\u2019s capacity to perform.\n\nIt is something that fulfils itself in the doing. In simply being present. In allowing the world to do its work.\n\nThe insight comes to me unearned and almost unnoticed, rather like this delicious fragrance drifting through the kitchen.<\/p>\n

In Praise of the Broken: On \u201cwabi-sabi\u201d and Imperfection<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Kipferl come out of the oven, golden and fragrant.\n\nThey are still hot, almost pliable, when I roll them in vanilla icing sugar. My fingertips smart from the heat. The tiny grains of sugar cling to the warm surface, dissolve and become part of the biscuit.<\/p>\n

Moving these little delicacies is something of a gamble.\n\nThey are so tender, so fragile.\n\nAnd yes, a few break in my hands, whose dexterity has its limits. One Kipferl loses a horn. Another falls into three pieces.\n\nThese go into a little bowl of their own and are granted immediate permission to be tasted while still warm.\n\nThey melt on the tongue like powdery snow.<\/p>\n

I think of the Japanese principle known as wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection, transience and incompleteness.\n\nA biscuit breaking in two is not its failure. It is its truth. Its nature.\n\nThe break reveals just how tender it is, how fragile, how vulnerable in its existence.\n\nAnd perhaps these broken halves are actually better. More intense somehow. After all, they offer a larger surface area for the delicious vanilla sugar.\n\nThey give me more pleasure than their intact, perfect form ever could.<\/p>\n

Passing It On with Warm Hands: Self-Care as Participation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Family and friends are sitting around the kitchen table now.\n\nThe moment the tin is opened, the scent of vanilla fills the air, soft and enveloping. Hands reach in. Kipferl disappear. People smile.\n\nI sit among them, my fingertips sugary from the biscuits, and watch as something more than fragrance fills the room.<\/p>\n

The fullness of the pleasure lies neither in the baking alone, nor in the preparation, nor even in the eating.\n\nIt is completed in the sharing. In enjoying something together. In the moment when whatever emerged from the stillness of the oven becomes alive in laughter and delight.\n\nAnd perhaps this is what self-care truly means to me: not simply caring for myself, but consciously recognising that I am not alone.\n\nThat everything is connected, even without the assistance of sticky sugar.\n\nThat I am part of all that was, all that is and all that will be. Connected to it.\n\nWatts calls it Tao.\n\nToday, it takes the form of a willingness to pass on something sweet and warm with buttery hands.<\/p>\n

Self-care as a radical form of participation in life itself.<\/p>\n

Epilogue:\n\nIf this has made you hungry, or if you find yourself intrigued by the possibility that Zen and what happens in a kitchen may be more closely related than one might think, Alan Watts\u2019s \"The Way of Zen\" could prove illuminating.\n\nAlternatively, simply conduct the experiment yourself.\n\nBake some Vanillekipferl.\n\nOr whatever else happens to want to be baked or cooked by your hands today.\n\nYou may find that, in the process, you understand rather more than any book could teach you.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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