Sherlock vs the Mince Pies

[smallhobbit]

Fandom: Sherlock bbc
Rating: G
Characters:  Sherlock Holmes, Watson/Lestrade
Word Count: 1,250
Summary: This is the third of my Christmas fics, written to say thank you to various friends who have helped me during the year.  This one is for thirdbird_fic who has encouraged me in many ways and above all made me laugh.  A lot of my recent writing has involved food in one way or another so in keeping with this she requested Sherlock cooking.  And after all, what could have been easier than making mince pies.

“I can’t see what the problem is; cooking is merely practical chemistry, so I fail to see why I shouldn’t be able to make mince pies.”

John merely huffed at Sherlock and grabbed his coat.  “Well, I would appreciate it if you left the kitchen in a better state than yesterday’s attempt.  Whatever exploded in the microwave had trickled out and run down the cupboard to make a sticky red mess on the floor.  Which since I didn’t find out till I trod in it, my slippers are sticky too and have a funny strawberry smell.”

Once John had left Sherlock took out his phone and sent a quick text to Lestrade.  Slippers have been ruined by jelly.  Please add to Father Christmas list.  Also more socks.

He measured out the flour and margarine and put both in the bowl.  Then he started to rub them together to make breadcrumbs, as instructed by the recipe.  At that point he remembered what had bothered him when reading the case file Lestrade had brought over the previous day, so he went into the living room, picked up the file and glanced through the photographs, leaving little bits of dough over the table and the file.

Having satisfied himself that his conclusions were correct he returned to the kitchen and set about hunting for a jug to put some water in.  It appeared that John had re-arranged the contents of the kitchen cupboards, because it wasn’t until he looked in the third cupboard that he found what he wanted.  He poured the water into the jug, leaving more dough on the tap.  In fact the dough seemed to have gone quite a long way, since it was obvious even to a copper from the Met which cupboards he’d opened in his search for the jug.  He made a mental note to follow up the amount of surface that a small handful of dough could reasonably be expected to cover.

He slopped some water into the breadcrumb mix and started to stir.  For some reason the mixture appeared wetter than he had expected so he added some more flour.  Since his fingers were still sticky the paper bag stuck to him, so he shook it vigorously at which point it fell out of his hands and onto the table, leading to a cloud of flour which covered everything within its considerable reach.  Sherlock coughed and battled on.

Once he judged the dough ready to roll he put it on the table, which was already conveniently coated in flour.  Sherlock rolled it to the required depth and then discovered that in fact there wasn’t sufficient flour on the table and it had stuck.  He pulled as much as possible off the table and started again, dividing the dough into sections so that he could roll it out on a dinner plate, since the table was now too sticky to use.

He used a mug to cut out some reasonable round shapes as the base of the pies and began to place them in the bun tray that he had borrowed from Mrs Hudson.  His original idea had been to make star shapes for the lids of the pies, but too much of the pastry was still stuck to the kitchen table, so he decided to restrict himself to a small strip across the top.    He realised that he would have too many for one tray load, and debated about seeing if he could borrow a second tray.  However, Mrs Hudson had said, rather pointedly he felt, that she was lending him her one old tray, so he accepted that he would have to bake two separate batches.  He put the first batch in the oven and went to have a further look at Lestrade’s case.

It took him rather longer than expected to look through the file, partly because some of the sheets were stuck together with dough, so it wasn’t until the smell of burning started to permeate out of the kitchen that he remembered his pies.

He rushed back into the kitchen and pulled the tray out of the oven, dumping it on the table.  A cursory glance was sufficient to establish that the first batch was going to be inedible.  He prised the offending articles out and tried again.  This time in order to ensure the mince pies didn’t over-cook he brought the file into the kitchen, scattered the papers over the table and waited for the pies to be ready.

Ten minutes later he triumphantly removed them from the oven.  All that remained was to remove the pies from the tray and put them to cool on a plate.  A rack would have been better, but the only suitable rack belonged to the grill and when he peered at it he wasn’t sure what had been on there last and whilst he wasn’t too bothered it did seem a shame to have little bits of green and yellow furry stuff attached to the pies.

He put the first two pies on the plate.  The third one refused point blank to move.  The next two were reasonably co-operative, but when he attacked the sixth to remove it from the tray it flew into the air and then disappeared under one of the cupboards.  The last two were glared into submission and came out relatively easily, which meant there were half a dozen mince pies on the plate, which Sherlock felt was perfectly acceptable.

Having demonstrated to his satisfaction that he was capable of cooking he decided that a brisk walk in the fresh air would enable him to finally tie up the last remaining loose ends of the case.  He therefore put the plate with the mince pies on top of a pile of Christmas cards and went out.

Ten minutes later John and Lestrade came into the flat.

“Right, I’ll stick the kettle on.  Throw some of Sherlock’s stuff on the floor and give yourself somewhere to sit.”

Leaving Lestrade in the sitting room John walked into the kitchen.  “What the bloody hell?”

Lestrade came and peered over John’s shoulder.  “How long did you leave him for?”

“Too long, clearly.”  John filled the kettle and then tried to remove the dough that had transferred from the tap onto his sleeve.  As he wiped one arm he caught the other on the table thus smearing mincemeat onto the second sleeve.  “I liked this jumper,” he moaned.

Lestrade mentally added “another jumper” to the Father Christmas list and smirked slightly.  The smirk didn’t last long, as he found the dough covered case notes.  He swore loudly, which only made John laugh. 

“I’m glad you think it funny,” he grumbled.

“Yep, and you’ve got flour all over your bum.”

“What you gonna do?  Make me take my trousers off?”

“That’s not such a bad idea.”

“Only if you take off all the clothes you’ve got sticky too.”

“Of course.  The cleaning up can wait"

When Sherlock came back to the flat he found a trail of clothing leading to John’s bedroom and the kitchen in much the same state as he had left it.  He picked up the plate of mince pies and retreated to his own room to wait until order was eventually re-instated.