Story of My Cake (part 1)

It has been a very a long time since i wrote anything in here. I have to say i have been busy (or lazy. Well, i have to find an excuse for it, doesn't i? )

Actually, i have been a little bit busy with improving my baking skills and making cakes for friends. I took few birthday cakes orders from some friends. I was trying to challenge myself to learn all new things by doing it and i love it. I love every challenge and opportunity to learn and try every single things. In the meantime, i also made a facebook page and instagram for my cakes under the same name which is Selly's Corner. I uploaded all pictures of my cakes that i have made over there. Yeah, i know it is a lazy mode. Only with few clicks, put on a short title, and i can have my pictures uploaded to be seen by anyone who's interested. And i can do it from anywhere, anytime I want. That's one of the reason i did not touch this blog for quite a long time. Beside i always forgot to take a picture of my cooking or write the details right after I cook or make something in my kitchen. Eating it right away is much more tempting than grab a pen and write down all the ingredients that I threw into the pan.

Well, now I'm back to this blog, at least to share some of my cakes that I've made lately of course with some short story behind it. Sorry for not sharing recipe this time. I'm just sharing a story.

Gluten Free Lactose Free Minion Cakes

One day,  one of my daughter's friend was coming to my house to play. When they were playing together, my daughter show her my minion cake that I have made and she was impressed. Long short story, few days after that, her mom called me and asked me if i can make a minion cake for her daughter. But with special condition. It has to be gluten free, dairy free cake. Because of my stupidity, I said yes, drew her a design, and made a research for those kind of cake. I have no experience playing with gluten free dairy free product before. So, if you ask me if i can make it, the answer is yes. Was it delicious? the answer is no. The cake was too dry.  Did i survive till the end? Barely. The whole process made me really want to cry so hard in my kitchen. And i got an important lesson after that. Do MORE research and pre-trial before the trial before the final product. 

Based on the request, the cake has 2 tiers. The minion part is the gluten free-dairy free cake, the bottom one is the normal vanilla cake (i mean full gluten and dairy). He's cute, isn't he? Holding a lolipop with a birthday hat. 

I had no problem with making the bottom tier. Just do like as the usual. Regular vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. The problem was with the minion. I had no problem carving it, shape it into a minion, and putting the details. The problem was the cake was too dry. The result was different than the trial which was not as dry as this one. I already run out all the ingredients and run out of the time. The simple sugar syrup was not helping either. The other problem was the buttercream. It was the first time I made a buttercream frosting with non dairy product. If I could turn back time, I really really wish I used Crisco (vegetable shortening) instead of those non dairy butter that i bought from nearby organic grocery store. It taste good indeed. but it can not hold it's shape for a long time. The frosting can not hardened even after i put it on fridge overnight. When you have to cover a cake with fondant, it is a nightmare. After some struggling and praying, I covered it with fondant anyway. I had to work faster than usual because I was afraid that the buttercream wont hold it shape much longer. 

I was soooo happy when it finished and looks really good. But even before the day was ended, i saw some water marks on the minion. It seems that the buttercream start become watery and leave a wet mark on some part of the fondant. I was lucky because it was on the back of the minion. When I made the delivery and finally got the news that the birthday girl loved it, I feel like I was in heaven. The mother agreed with me that the gluten-dairy free cake was too dry (my failure) but everybody loves the regular cake. 

Yeah. I have to learn more to make non allergic cake product. I learned a lot from that experience. 

Haloween Mini Cakes

I made this cake on October 2015. 

After months without making any cakes, I think it is time to make another one. Because October was coming soon, I decided to make something Halloweeny.  I did not want to make too many cake because I make it too big, no one would eat it and it would end up on my fridge untouched for weeks. So, for this time I made a small cake. Just to satisfy my desire to bake and decorate something. 

My halloween cakes were quite small. the diameter of each cake was about 8 cm only. I caved the cakes into pumpkin shape and covered them with orange fondant. On the first cake I made a haloween cat fondant figurine and the other one with cute witch. Thanks to youtube and google for providing a lot of basic tutorial to make halloween fondant cake toppers. It was really helpful.  

For the final touch, I painted the pumpkin with orange food coloring to make it brighter. I love the effect of this painting but i hate the taste of the fondant after it. I had to peel it off when i eat the cake. Another lesson learned.  The addition food coloring on the surface made the fondant taste bad. So next time when I make somebody cake with painted fondant, i may not forget to warn them that the fondant is tasted bad.

That was 2 of few cakes that I have made since last year. I will continue my story next time on the next post. To be continue and see you on next episode :) 

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Garlic Butter Prawns

Did I already tell you how much I love prawns? Prawns and shrimps are one of my favorite ingredients in cooking. They taste great and can make the taste of most of the food better. For example, I love to add a little bit minced prawn when I make fried rice, or spring roll, or any kind of dumplings.  Sometimes, I puree it together with wheat flour and spices to make a prawn batter, fry it, and add it in my soup. I really love it.

This time, I still have about 1/2 kg frozen tiger prawn in my freezer and I would love to make a nice dish out of it for our dinner. I will make a garlic butter prawns. This is one of the best prawns dish I've ever eat.

It is very easy to make. But, talking about prawn (and shrimps), is all about preparation. Peeling their skin is not really a fun thing to do especially if I have to peel skins of huge amount of  prawns. Removing their back is easier but still need quite a long time. I only need to make a shallow cut on the back of the prawn and remove the black vein. I've shown you how to devein a prawn without make a cut on it when I made ebi furai long time ago. It's more complicated and need much more patience. But thanks God, I don't need to do that for this recipe. I don't even need to peel their skin because I cheated!  Ho ho ho... I bought frozen peeled-deveined prawns. It really help to reduce the preparation times. I just need to thaw the prawns. Don't use a microwave to thaw a prawn or the prawn will be ruined. Just leave it in the room temperature for about 30-60 minutes. It's the best way to thaw a frozen prawn. Once they're thawed, remove the excess water, dry them well with kitchen towel, and the prawns are ready to be cooked.


Ingredients :

• 500 grams tiger prawn, peeled (Tip : you can always leave the tail on.), and deveined
• 50 grams (about 1/2 cup) white flour
• 2-3 tbs olive oil
• 15 grams (1 tbs) butter
• 30 grams  (2 tbs) butter
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 medium chili pepper, remove the seeds and the stem and slice it thinly
• salt
• ground black pepper
• pinch of freshly chopped parsley

Preparation : 

1. First dust the prawns with flour lightly.
2. Heat some olive oil in a skillet. 
3. Once the oil is hot, place the dusted prawns in an even layer on the skillet and cook it until they turn pink. Flip them over one by one and cook the other side until they become pink. The total process will take about 1 minute. 
4. Take the prawns off the skillet and set it aside on a plate.
5. Repeat until all the prawns are cooked. 
6. Prepare another bigger pan. (Tip : I'm using a wok pan because my skillet is quite small. If your skillet is big enough to make a stir fry, remove the leftover oil and clean the surface with kitchen towel if needed and you can use it again for the next step. Be careful it's hot)
7. Heat the pan and melt 1 tbs butter. 
8. Once the butter is melted, stir in minced garlic and sliced chili pepper for about 1 minute or until they start to become tender and smell good.
9. Add precooked prawns and cook and stir them together for about 1-2 minutes until all the prawns are mixed well with all the garlic and chili pepper. 
10. Season it with salt and ground black pepper
11. Add 2 tbs butter into the pan and stir it just until the butter is melted. 
12. Turn off the heat and add some chopped parsley.
13. Serve immediately. (Tip : Serve it with hot steamed rice)

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Farm Birthday Cake

This is actually a very late post. I made this cake for my son's third birthday 3 months ago.

The story began when I made a plan to make a small party to celebrate my son's 3rd birthday party. This is the first time I and my husband were going to invite some friends to come over for this party. Because this kind of event had to be prepared, I started to make a design for his birthday cake about 1 month before. My son is crazy in love with alphabet. He loves to sing ABC song and play with any kind of alphabet toys. So, I planned to make an ABC train birthday cake.

I've come up with a lot of ideas but it seemed none of them were good and easy enough to make. I just didn't get the feeling for it. I knew if I didn't get the feeling then the cake won't be good enough and I won't be satisfied with it. Of course I wanted to make a good impression.

Seeing me struggling with it for weeks while the clock is ticking, my husband suggested me to check another theme for the cake. He thought that farm cake with a lot of animal on it would be great and cute enough for my son. He would still love it even though it is not an alphabet. Beside, I won't need a lot of  carving and because I still had a lot of other things to prepare for the party.

He's right. So, farm cake it is.

1 week before the party, I started to make the animal fondant toppers for the cake. I had a lot of fun making some ducks, chicken, some cute little piggies, a cow, a horse (only its head actually), and a lot of carrots and corns. You can see how messy it was. ^^

I also made a barn, a sign board, a cart, and a lot of hay.

This time I was not using vanilla, or chocolate or red velvet any kind of common cake that I usually used. For this farm cake, I was using lapis Surabaya or Surabaya layered cake. Lapis Surabaya is a classic Indonesian sponge cake. It is very popular and common to be used as a basis cake for any kind of birthday cake in Indonesia.  I have no idea why it's named after capital city of East Java, which is Surabaya. Maybe it was made for the first time in Surabaya. 

This cake is made from 3 layers of 2 layers of vanilla sponge cake and 1 layer of chocolate sponge cake and glued together with strawberry jam in between. Sponge cake? Before you ask, I can tell you that this is not like regular sponge cake. This kind of sponge cake has a very rich taste because the original recipe requires about 10-15 egg yolk for each layer.

I didn't want to use too much egg for my cake. So, I made the cake based on Wu Lan's Kitchen recipe with a little bit adjustment. Because my cake pan is bigger than the original recipe, the result of my cake was thinner than it should be. So, I added 1 more layer of sponge cake to make the cake higher. Forgive me because I totally forgot to take a picture of my lapis surabaya. I made it late at night in the middle of chaotic preparation for the party. 

Ingredients : 

For  vanilla layer 

• 6 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 70 gr white granulated sugar
• 40 gr all purpose flour
• 15 gr corn starch
• 1 1/2 tbs milk
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 65 gr butter melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp ovallete

(make it double for the second layer)

For the chocolate layer

• 6 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 80 gr white granulated sugar
• 30 gr all purpose flour
• 15 gr corn starch
• 10 gr cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp instant coffee powder
• 1 1/2 tbs milk
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 65 gr butter melted
• 1 tsp ovallete

(make it double for the second layer)

Preparation : (for each layer)

1. Preheat oven for 170 C (338F) 
2. Prepare a baking tray (I'm using 26x26x7 cm baking tray) and line it with baking paper. set aside.
3. In a big bowl beat together eggs, egg yolk, sugar, and ovallete with hand mixer until thickened.
4. In another bowl, mix together flour, corn starch, and baking powder ( add cocoa powder and instant coffee powder) and sift all those dry ingredient mixture
5. Add sifted dry ingredients and milk into egg mixture and beat them again on high speed until the batter become pale, soft, and there's a ribbon tail formed when the mixer is removed from the batter.
6. Add half of the melted butter and vanilla extract into the batter.
7. Using a rubber spatula, mix the butter by folding the batter until the melted butter are mixed well.
8. Add the rest of the melted butter, fold it again until well mixed and no more trace of melted butter on the cake batter. 
9. Pour the batter into the baking tray and even the surface with spatula. 
10. Bang the tray on the table few time to remove the bubbles.
11. Put the tray into the oven and bake it for about  20 minutes. 
12. Remove the tray from the oven and let it cool for about 10 minutes. 
13. Repeat all the process for all the layers
14. Once all the cake are ready, stack all the layer together with using strawberry jam between each layer as a glue. (Tip : you can always use buttercream instead of strawberry jam)

Once my cake is done, I covered them with pandan flavored buttercream frosting. Well, it is just an regular vanilla buttercream with some pandan paste and green food coloring. Now, here comes the fun part. It's time to put all those little tiny creatures on the top of the cake.

First, I place the barn on the top of the cake. After that, I made a small pond for the ducks using blue buttercream, and some fondant.

And I made a muddy puddle for the piggies using mixture of vanilla buttercream, cocoa powder, and nutella. The taste was quite good actually. 

I place the cow and some hay, carrots, and corns around the barn and the cake started to look good. 

Look! There's a chicken on the top of the barn. My daughter said it's kind of weird because it supposed to be a bird nest. But I think a chicken and its nest can do just well. ^^

And there's a cart with hay as well.

I made this board using fondant as well, wrote my son's name using melted chocolate, and stick it into buttercream covered cup cake. The story was I needed a place to stick the board but it seemed that I couldn't find a perfect spot for it. Lucky me, I just happened to have one left store bought cup cake on my fridge. I decided to cut the top, turn it upside down, trim the edge, and covered it with green buttercream. Now, I had a good place to stick the board.

After that, the finishing touch was easy. I made a fence from pretzels stick glued with chocolate and stick them to the edge of the cake. I threw some fondant flowers, grass, and stones and it's done. I LOVE it and satisfied with the results. When i heard my son started to sing "E-I-E-I-Ooooo.." when he saw the cake, I knew he loved it as well.

Now, the cake is ready to be cut ^^ Happy third birthday, my lovely son.

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Alphabet Cookies

Still for my daughter's birthday edition. (I know this is a very late post because her birthday was in January)

Like as usual, every birthday, she would bring some treats for her classmates at school. If last year I made her no stick cake pops, this time I wanted to make  her a decorated sugar cookies. My first plan for the cookies was just a very simple round cookies with royal icing on top. When I was trying to find my round cookie cutter, I found my alphabet cutter. It has been sitting untouched for a month inside my storage box since I bought it on sale last December. Then it has been decided to cut my cookies into alphabet shapes instead.

I made the cookie dough about a week before her birthday, divided it into 3 big part, froze them separately, baked them about 3 days before the big day, and glazed them with royal icing on the next day. It was a lot of work. Maybe because of the size of the cookies or maybe because I'm not used to do it, I needed a lot of time to glaze all of them. I need more than 2 hour to glaze only 1/3 from total cookies that I made. I promised myself I will learn how to glaze faster next time. But really. It was fun and the result were cute. I really like it.

After done with glazing, I divide them and put them into a paper cup that has been cut and modified into a gift box. I found on the internet nice tutorial how to make a gift box out of a paper cup. It's easy to make and cute. Check it from this website. It's perfect to pack small treats such as pop corn, macaroons, and sugar cookies.

Just fill the cup with the treats (in my case I fill the cup with my alphabet sugar cookies), and fold the cup to close it up (open the link above). Because I was using a plain white paper cup, I decorated it with washi tape and a print out label like this. 

This is the recipe for the cookies. It is a different recipe from my own sugar cookies recipe. I was using sugar cookies recipe from Katarina's kitchen. I need sugar cookies with medium-soft, chewy texture and this is one of good recipe I've tried so far.

Ingredients :

• 227 grams (1 cup) butter, room temperature
• 200 grams (1 cup) white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 384 grams (3 cups) all purpose flour

Preparation :

1. Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F) 
2. Prepare a baking sheet and line it with baking paper. Set aside
3. In a big bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth
4. Beat in extracts and egg
5. In a separate bowl, combine baking powder with flour and add a little at a time to the wet ingredients. At this point, the dough will be very stiff. 
6. Turn the dough onto a countertop surface which has been dusted with flour and knead the dough by hand.
7. Divide the dough into 3 batches 
8. Take 1 batch and wrap the rest with plastic wrap and keep it in the refrigerator. 
9. Roll out the dough onto floured surface (make it about 5 mm thick) and cut it into desired shape.
10. Place the unbaked cookies on the prepared baking sheet and bake them for 7-9 minutes.
11. Once it's done, let them cool until they are firm enough to be transferred to a cooling rack.
12. Store the cookies in the airtight container.

For the glazing, I was using instant royal icing. I only need to add some water on it and it is ready to use. Sometimes, glazed cookies could get soggy after a while. It is because the moisture from the glazing has been absorbed by the cookies. It happens a lot especially if you live in place with high humidity. To prevent my cookies become soggy after glazing, after the surface of the royal icing is dry, I usually "bake" them once more. But this time I only set my oven to 50 C and put my glazed cookies into the oven for about 5-7 minutes. I won't put them too long into the oven because I worry the color of the glazing will become brownish because of the caramelization of the sugar from the icing.

Well, end of story, my daughter's friends like the cookies. They even thought the cookies are cute and unique. When my daughter told that to me, all I can say was my hard work has been paid very well :)

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Frozen Birthday Cake

"Let it go... Let it go.... Turn away and slam the door." I bet most of you already know what song that is. Yeap!! That is Let it go from Disney Frozen movie. My daughter was crazy in love with that movie and the songs. And now she wants a Frozen cake for her 9th birthday. Hmm.... another project for me.

First, I was thinking to make Elsa cake using an Elsa's barbie doll. The concept is like making a usual barbie cake, but this time just change the barbie doll, with Elsa's doll. After days of thinking and googling, I found a problem. I could not find an Elsa's barbie doll. Anywhere. I had to buy it online but the price was not cheap as well. It's not that I could not afford it, but it's not that worth it. That's why, I decided to change the whole idea by making a cake using  Disney Frozen movie character figurines. I had to buy it online as well (I found it on ebay), but the price is much more affordable.

After days searching on the internet, I wanted to make a tier cake with stairs and I will decorate the cake with the Frozen figurines. The whole cake will be made by using combination of vanilla and chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream to cover the whole cake. I wanted to make it looks like a snow mountain. Don't ask why the mountain has stairs on it. Just let it be. ^^

About 5 days before my daughter's birthday, I found on the internet, a picture of Frozen cake decorated with blue hard candy. It looks gorgeous. It seems the hard candy is not that hard to make and I think it is a good idea to decorate my cake. I only need white granulated sugar, light corn syrup, water, and royal blue coloring agent. The problem is, light corn syrup is not  easy to find in here. To be exact, I can not find it anywhere. Well, based on my memory from what I've learned in University, in making hard candy, light corn syrup is needed to help make the hard candy more clear and transparent. Basically it will make the candy is clear like glass and not opaque. But it is optional. Because of that, I decided not to make blue hard candy without light corn syrup. I couldn't find it anyway.

It worked (after 3rd attempt) . I got a clear thin blue hard candy. After it's done and cool completely, I store it inside a zip lock bag. 4 days after, when I started to decorate the cake, I kind of regret that I made the candy too early. I do not know why but the candy is not clear anymore. They become opaque. It seems that the sugar are crystallized. I didn't have time to make a new one, so I keep decorating the cake with that opaque candy. Sad, indeed but it worked just fine.

Since the beginning, I wanted to learn how to make a spiral stairs cake. I was so eager and curious to make it until I did not really pay attention to the detail of the overall cake. It was until last minute when I decided to  cover an ice cream cone with white chocolate melted to make snowy trees and trying to stick some blue hard candy to the tower using white chocolate. And my first plan to dust the cake with powdered sugar as the finishing touch to make the snow a little bit more real was totally forgotten until my daughter blew the candles and cut the cake.

 I have to admit this cake was not my best especially with the details but not really that bad either. Now I know hot to make a spiral stair cake and  I can still see the frozen movie over there complete with Sven, Kristoff, Olav, Anna, and Elsa. I'm really sorry for prince Hans. I have no place for you over there. You had to stay in Arendelle anyway.

Well, now, let me share some pictures of this cake.

When I made this cake, I still had two nice big sliced of vanilla cake and a lot of buttercream frosting. I decided to make some small cake using those leftover cake, cover it with frosting and fondant, wrapped them nicely with transparent plastic and ribbon. It would be a nice going to home gift for my daughter's friends after party.

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Gudeg (Unripe Jackfruits Stew)

Maybe some of you is asking what is Gudeg? Or absolutely have no idea or never even heard about Gudeg. Well, let me tell you. Gudeg is one of traditional Indonesian food. Maybe it is not as famous as Beef Rendang or Nasi Goreng, but I guarantee you that Gudeg is as delicious as both of them.

Gudeg is Javanese cuisine from Central Java and is made from young or unripe jack fruits boiled together with palm sugar, coconut milk, many of spices, and teak leaves (to make its color become brown). Basially, it is a stew unripe jack fruits. Because the jack fruit is cooked together with a lot of palm sugar, Gudeg is not spicy at all. It tastes sweet and rich. But wait for it. Before you ask where you can get the spicy taste from this cuisine, I will tell you that Gudeg is usually served together with hot steam rice, Opor ayam (chicken boiled in coconut milk), hard boiled egg, fried tofu and tempeh, and sambal goreng krecek (cattle skin spicy stew). See, there is a sambal on it. Gudeg itself is really delicious. But try to eat Gudeg komplit (complete served Gudeg with the opor, fried tofu and tempeh, sambal krecek, boiled egg, and hot steamed rice). It's heaven!! (God. I'm drooling right now)

I really love Gudeg. I could eat a lot of it only with hot steamed rice and krupuk (starch crackers). But too bad, when I was In Indonesia, there were not many places that sell Gudeg. It was not really common in East Java. Even if there were, it was not really cheap and sometime, it was too spicy. I prefer a sweet style Gudeg. (East Java cuisine is more spicy than Central Java cuisine meanwhile, Central Java cuisine is sweeter than East Java cuisine). Years later, I accidentally found a Gudeg recipe from internet. It surprisingly easy to make. And what made me more surprised, that I found out that I could use tea leaves instead of teak leaves. Of course tea leaves is much more easy to get instead of teak leaves. I never even saw the teak trees.

Some people doubt me because I was going to make Gudeg with canned unripe jackfruit (not fresh jack fruit), tea leaves, and canned coconut milk. They said the result would not as good as if I were using fresh ingredients like in Indonesia. But hey! Show must go on. I gave it a try, and I really really satisfied with the result. It was sweet, and rich like I the Gudeg that I wanted. No one will never ever realized if I was using canned ingredients and tea bag instead of teak leaves.

Canned Unripe Jackfruit

The down side for making this cuisine is I needed more than 4 hours to cook it into perfection. Well, it's ok. I can make it once or two times a year is enough for me. I just have to double the recipe and I can enjoy Gudeg for at least 3 days.

Ingredients :

• 3 cans (about 500 grams net for each can) unripe jack fruit, drain the water. 
• 4 eggs
• 2 english tea bags or black tea bags
• 5 bayleaves
• 1 tsp tamarind paste
• 120 grams palm sugar, cut into small pieces
• 1 can (450 ml) coconut milk
• 4 medium shallots (or about 10 Indonesian shallots)
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 10 candlenuts
• 1 1/2 tbs ground coriander seeds
• 1 inch fresh galangal
• 1 tsp salt
• water

Preparation :

1. First, boil the eggs until you get a nice hard boiled eggs. Once the egg is cooked, drain the water and rinse them with a cold water and peel the skin.
2. Blend or ground together shallots, garlic, candlenuts, coriander, fresh galangal, and salt until you get a paste form.
   
3. Put all the unripe jackfruit and tea bags into a big pot. Add some water until almost all of the jackfruit are covered and let it boil. 
   
4. Once the water is boiled, reduce the heat and let it simmer for about 10-15 minutes.
5. Add hard boiled egg, tamarind paste, palm sugar, and spices paste into the pot. 
6. Turn back the heat to medium and let it cook for about 1 hours.
7. Add bayleaves and coconut milk into the pot.
   
8. Reduce the heat into medium-low, cover the pot (don't forget to leave a small gap between the pot and the lid), and cook it for another 3-4 hours or until most of the liquid are gone and the spices and sugar are being absorbed by the jackfruits. 

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Star Pastry Snack

Looking for an easy last minutes snack for a party? Or a simple Christmas treats idea? I have a good recipe for you. Star pastry snack. It is cute, simple, easy to make, and delicious. As long as you have ready to use puff pastry, egg, and sugar, you can make it anytime you want.

I got this idea about few days before my son's Christmas party at school. It's very common in here that the children will have a Christmas dinner together at school to celebrate Christmas every year. Basically, every children will gather together and have dinner together at school along with the teacher and their classmate. They get to use a nice clothing, such as a dress or suit, and sit around the nicely decorated table. There will be a candles and cute set of cutlery (of course it's plastic) as well. The party itself is a potluck. Each (parents of the) children have to bring one kind of food (preferable finger food). For a smaller children, they do not have dinner but they will have Christmas breakfast.

My son is still 2.5 years old and he's still in peuterspeelzaal (playgroup). He was going to have a Christmas breakfast at his school and I could bring some snack for the children. Hmm... Making a snack for 2-4 y.o children is not as easy as making snack for 8-9 y.o children. They're more picky and can not accept all kind of food. I suddenly remember couple months ago when I made pastry snack using some leftover puff pastry from making custard cream horns. There were a lot of small slices and cut puff pastry that could not be used to make custard horns. Instead of threw them away into garbage bin, I brushed them all with egg wash, sprinkle some crystal sugar on the top, and baked them by following the instruction as the usual. Based on the same method, I think I could make a good snack for his Christmas party at school. Beside, I know my son likes it.

I made about 30 stars, put them in a plastic bag and wrap it nicely complete with a ribbon. It could be a good idea for Christmas gift as well. Just stick a small Christmas card on it, and it's ready to cheers up someone else's day. Merry Christmas everybody ^^

Ingredients : (for making 20 stars)

• 5 sheets ready to use puff pastry (I'm using 20x20 cm ready to use puff pastry)
• 1 egg, beaten
• about 150 grams white granulated sugar 

Preparation :

1. Thaw the puff pastry for about 10 minutes to make it easier to cut
2. Meanwhile, preheat oven for 200 C (392 F)
3. Prepare a baking sheet and line it up with baking paper. Set aside.
4. Using a star cookie cutter, cut 1 sheet the puff pastry into 4 stars
5. Place them on the prepared baking sheet.
6. Repeat the process for all those puff pastry sheet. 
7. Brush all the surface of the cut puff pastry with egg wash.
8. Sprinkle granulated sugar on top generously.
9. Put the pastry inside the preheated oven and bake it for 10-12 minutes or until they become golden brown. (Tip : take the pastry out of the oven once they become golden brown. the smaller the pastry cut, the shorter baking time that needed. It's really depend on the size of you pastry. But it is important to make sure that all the pastry have roughly the same size)
10. Take the pastry out an let them cool completely. 

Tip : This snack is not meant to be stored for a long time. They could get soggy fast if it's not stored properly inside airtight container or not be eaten as soon as possible. If it's happening, put the pastry on the baking sheet and pop it into preheated 180 C oven for about 10 minutes. 

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Minion Birthday Cake

Last month, one of my daughter's friend was celebrating a birthday. And it just happened that she loves minions. I and her mother were just chatting around, and she asked me if maybe I could make a cute minion cake for her daughter's birthday party. I said yes without thinking! Few hours after the deal was made, it seems that my nervous thought was just awake and started to question my ability to make it. Will I be able to make it? How if I ruined the cake? That's mean that I would ruin a girl's birthday. I don't want that to happen. I almost never make a sculpted cake before. Well, I've made some before. But those cake were not  meant for selling purpose.

Calm down and be positive. It's  great challenge. This could be a good opportunity to start what I've been dreaming lately which is turn my hobby into a business. I've made a Pirate Boat Cake before. So, basically I know how to carve a cake. Beside, there's a lot of tutorial on the internet. How hard could it be. (Maybe if her mother knows this she would not order the cake from me. Thanks to her for putting such a big faith in me.^^ ) 

Well, I'm so glad I decided to go on and trust my skill. Voila!! I'm so happy with the result. 

I'm not saying it was perfect. But it's not bad for first attempt. I was not saying it was easy either. But well, I made it. :) This is the rough sketch of the cake that I wanted to make. Sitting minion with banana cupcake (But later I changed the cupcake with a small round cake with candle on top).

To realize that sketch, my first step, is to make all the details of the minion such as the Gru symbol, his overall button, the goggle, and the hair. I made it about 5 days before final assembly. Thanks to Ann Reardon from How to cook that for sharing a nice tutorial how to make minion cake. From her video I could learn how to make the big and nice silver goggle and all those tiny minion hairs. 

This minion cake is built from vanilla cake with vanilla butter cream. I've made 1 + 1/4 recipe of vanilla cake and bake it in a 15 cm round cake pan. I don't have 15 cm round cake pan, so I made a disposable cake pan by myself using a cardboard and aluminium foil. Well, I guess I miscalculated the size of the cake. I made the cake too much. The order were a cake for 15-20 people. But I think the amount of the cake that I baked could feed about 20-25 people. 

After the cake is done, the real work is begin. Cutting, stacking, sculpting, and shaping. 

After about 30 minutes, I managed to sculpt and shape my cake from the left picture into the right picture. Not bad, right?  The height of my minion cake to be is about 23 cm (the cake only) with 13 cm diameter.  

I coat the cake with vanilla butter cream twice. First, I coat it with a thin layer of butter cream and put it into the fridge until it firm up. This first layer will catch the crumb cake that fall from the cake so it wont get mixed with the the next layer of butter cream. After I finished with second coating, I put the cake again into the fridge before move to the next step.

Now, it's time to cover the cake with yellow fondant. It turned out, covering a big cake with fondant is not as easy as I imagined. I accidentally tear the fondant and had to re-roll it again. Too bad I didn't have fondant smoother as well. Making the hand was not easy either. I had to use small ramekins to prop the hand and prevent it being broken. After the yellow part is done, actually I had to make a pants for my minion. But I was a bit nervous so I decided to do it later and put the eye and black goggle strap. 

For the pants, I made a simple template using a paper and cut the fondant by following those template. It was quite hard to make it without a template. I always made it too big and had to redo it again and again. After the pants is done, its time to put all the small detail on my minion such as his tiny little feet, the pocket with Gru's symbol, the buttons for the pants, his hands. goggle, hairs, and finishing the detail for the small round cake. And the banana of course! ^^

By making this cake, I got a lot of leftover cake crumbs. I can eat it just like that. But it was too much and most of the crumbs were really crumbly and I couldn't even poke it with a fork. Well, it just happened that I had white chocolate bar and leftover heavy cream. So, it was possible to make a cake pop out of it. Remember my "failed" cake pop? Using the same recipe, but with white chocolate instead of dark chocolate, I could make about 20 cake pop out of my leftover cake crumbs.

Make an oval shaped cake pop and put it into fridge to make it nice and firm.  After all the cake pop are nice and firm, first dip half part of it into blue melted chocolate. Before the blue chocolate became dry, insert cake pop stick into the cake pop and put 2 mini chocolate M&M's or choco chips for the minion shoes. Once the blue part is dry, dip the other half into melted yellow chocolate and stick the eye and the hair of the minion. I was using chocolate sprinkle for its hair and edible eye for its eyes. But maybe I should use another kind of white candy because my daughter said that the eye did not taste good. Well, next time better.

Tip : If your melted chocolate is too thick, add some vegetable shortening (I'm using Crisco), pop it into microwave for a few sec, stir it well until all the shortening are melted and mixed with the chocolate. Put it back into microwave and reheat it again if needed or if there is still lump on the chocolate mixture. 

It was only needed a few minutes to make all the chocolate dry. After that,  I start to make all the detail. I put leftover yellow and blue chocolate into zip lock bag, melted some pure chocolate candy and put it into another zip lock bag as well. I used it to draw all the detail such as minion's hands, goggle straps, and their pullover. It was not easy as I imagined. I could not make it as smooth as I wanted. Besides, I had some problems with chocolate and Crisco lump that clogged the tip of my pipping bag. But hey!! The result is not that bad. I even think that they are quite cute. Don't you think so?  ^^

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Homemade Cheesy Almond Crispy

It has been months after my last post. I've been busy since my last summer holiday (or lazy. Only God knows the truth ^^). I had a great summer holiday in Indonesia. It was amazing. I met all my family, my parents, my lovely sister, and all those people who I've never seen for years during my stay in Netherlands. The weather was amazing (including the heavy tropical rain,  but I still hate the mosquitoes and the flood), the foods were amazing too. I really miss the original taste of Indonesian food.

Speaking about food, when I was in Bandung, my sister in law got a box of snack named Almond crispy cheese. I think it's a new brand of snack because I never found it years ago. After one bite, I have to say that those thing is good. It was delicious and I would love to have another box. But too bad this snack was not available in Bandung because her friend bought from another city.

After the holiday end and I back to the Netherlands, I tried to find the recipe. I was not hoping I would find it but it turned out there are some people who already made and share the basic recipe. And  it is surprisingly easy to made.

From one recipe I could bake two times full of my baking sheets, but only half of them survived and could get inside my container. My daughter loved it. She ate most of the crackers by herself even before I took them off from the baking sheet.


Ingredients :

• 75 grams egg white  (Tip : 1 large egg contain about 30 grams egg white. So you will need 2-3 eggs to get 75 grams egg white.)
• 60 grams white granulated sugar
• 50 grams cake flour (or All purpose flour)
• 70 grams almond flakes
• 70 grams grated cheddar cheese
• 25 grams butter, melted
• some grated cheddar cheese for sprinkle

Preparation :

1. In a bowl, with a wire whisk, beat together egg white and sugar until bubbly. (Tip : For making this almond crispy, you don't need to beat the egg white until soft peak formed. There're no even a peak. Only bubbles)
2. Add flour and melted butter into the bowl and mix them together with bubbly egg whites.
3. Add almond flakes and grated cheese into the mixture and mix again.
4. Scrap the side of the bowl to prevent sticky egg white mixture on it.
5. Wrap the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
6. Meanwhile, preheat the oven for 150 C (300 F) and layer a baking sheet with baking paper. 
7. Take the almond mixture out from the fridge and fold and stir it once more with a spoon or spatula.
8. Take about 1 tbs of mixture and put it on the prepared baking sheet. Spread it very very thinly and evenly. (Tip :  You can make it round, or rectangle, or unshaped, or anything, but the most important thing is spread it thinly (2-3 mm thin) and as even as possible to make it evenly cooked and crispy.)
9. Repeat it with all the batter left. 
10. Sprinkle on top with some of grated cheddar cheese.
11. Put the baking sheet into preheated oven and bake it for about 10 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet and bake it again for another 5-6 minutes.
12. Take it out from the oven and let it cool completely before removing all the almond crispy from the baking paper.
13. Store it in a air tight container. Be careful not to press it too hard. 

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Blueberry Cake

Last week, when I was trying to find cake recipe on the internet, I stumble on a nice picture of a blue cake. That cake was soooo blue and looks awesome. After I read it further, it says that it's a blue velvet cake. I found that the cake was using some blue berry for its ingredients and quite a lot of blue dye. I really want to make it because it looks so blue and pretty. But I don't really want to use that much of blue dye. Well, I've made red velvet cake using raspberry concentrate. And it happened that I have a box of blueberry in my fridge. Maybe I could make a blue velvet cake with blueberry concentrate or something similar. Or maybe I could even throw in some blueberry inside the cake to increase the blueberry taste.

First, I made the blueberry jam. I had to admit that I let too much liquid evaporated but it doesn't matter. Meanwhile waiting for the jam become cool, I started to make the cake batter. After the batter was done, I pour all the jam into the batter and mix it manually. The result was not like I was expected because the batter turned out purple and not blue!! I added few drop of blue dye and hoping that the color would turn like the one on the internet. But after drops of blue dye, I couldn't get royal blue color like the picture. To be honest, I started to regret my decision to add some blue dye. Why didn't I add purple dye instead to make a purple cake instead of blue cake. Well, what's done is done. Can't be undone. I pour my blueish batter into the pan, and put it into the oven. 15 minutes inside the oven, I just realize that I made another mistake!! I totally forgot to add some fresh blueberry into the batter. Oh well...

After the cake was done and completely cool, I cover it with butter cream cheese frosting and decorate it with some fresh blueberry. (Forgive me for a bad and plain decoration. I was not in a mood to decorate a cake) Like as usual, I made a small round blueberry cake and few of mini cupcake. The cake taste good and even better with butter cream cheese frosting on it.

Ingredients :

• 192 grams (3/4 cup) AP flour
• 1/2 tsp cacao powder
• 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
• 30 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
• 92 grams white granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 120 ml (about 1/4 cup) milk
• 1/8 tsp salt
• Royal blue coloring agent
• For blueberry jam : 150 grams fresh blueberry + 30 grams white granulated sugar + 50 ml water

Preparation :
First, lets make the blueberry jam

1. In a pot, boil together blueberry, sugar and water until the blueberry start to break down.
2. Stir until almost all of the liquid are evaporated.
3. Transfer it into a bowl and let it cool completely.
   

Now, lets make the cake. 

1. Preheat oven for 180 C (350 F)
2. Prepare a cake pan, grease with butter, and line it with baking paper. Set aside. (Tip :  you can always use a muffin tin instead)
3. In a bowl, mix together flour, cacao powder, baking powder, and salt.
4. In another big bowl, with a electric or hand mixer, beat the butter until creamy.
5. Add granulated sugar into the creamy butter and beat again on high speed until light and fluffy.
6. Add egg and vanilla extract into the butter mixture and beat again.
7. Add about 1/3 of flour mixture alternately with about 1/3 of milk. Mix well before adding another 1/3 of flour mixture and milk.
8. Add blueberry jam into the batter and fold it manually with a spatula. 
9. At this point, once the blueberry jam is well mixed with the batter, you should get a purple batter.
10. Add few drop of blue coloring into the batter (if you want to make a blueish cake) and mix well.
11. Pour the batter into prepared cake pan or muffin tin.
12. Put it into preheated oven and bake for about 30-35 minutes or until skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
13. Take it out from the oven and let it cool completely before cutting or adding buttercream on it.

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Choco Almond Cookies

Choco chip cookies is one of the most famous cookies that ever existed. Who doesn't like this delicious cookies. It is crunchy outside and chewy inside with half melted chocolate chips on all around the cookies. I like it. It's perfect to be served with hot tea, coffee, or even ice cream. This chocolate chips cookies is originated from United States which was traditionally made from a dough contained butter, brown sugar, white sugar, and chocolate chips. Nowadays, this choco chip cookies have been improved and modified a lot. There are a lot of variants besides chocolate chips such as choco-macademia, choco-dried cranberry, white chocolate chips, or even M&M's. 

Few weeks ago, using a basic chocolate chip cookies that I have, I wanted to combine it with sliced almond. I still had some sliced almond left on my kitchen. I think it's a good combination.  For my cookies, i would not use any chocolate chips but I will use chopped chocolate easter eggs instead. I still have plenty of easter chocolate and no one eat it anymore. So, why don't make them useful.

It's very easy to make. Even my son  helped me to sprinkle some almond on the top of the cake. (Some of it disappeared on his mouth) When i put the dough into the oven my house smelled like a bakery. It smells so good. And when it's done, my kids could not wait to dig it in. They kept peeking into the oven to watch the dough slowly melted and spreading because of the heat during the baking process. Definitely would make this cookie again next time.

Ingredients :

• 225 grams All purpose flour
• 150 grams room temperature unsalted butter
• 70 grams brown sugar
• 60 grams white granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 120 grams chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips
• 120 grams sliced almond
• 30 grams sliced almond for additional sprinkles (optional)

(Tip :  Feel free to increase the amount of chocolate chip up to 200 grams if you want to have cookies with a lot of chocolate on it. )

Preparation :

1. Preheat oven for 190 C (374 F)
2. Prepare a baking sheet and line it with baking paper. Set aside.
3. In a big bowl, mix together butter, brown sugar, and white sugar.
4. Beat them together until creamy.
5. Add egg and vanilla extract and beat them again.
6. Add flour, baking powder, and salt into the mixture and beat them together.
7. Add chocolate chip and sliced almond into the dough, and mix fold them with a spatula until all the chocolate and almond are evenly distributed.
8. Take about 1- 1 1/2 tsp of dough, with 2 spoon form it into a ball, and drop it on the prepared baking sheet. Leave enough space between each dough ball to allow the cookies spreading during the baking.
9. Sprinkle some more sliced almond on the top of the dough. 
10. Put the dough into the preheated oven and bake them for about 15 minutes or until the cookies become golden brown (Tip : increase the baking time about 3-5 minutes of you want to get more crispy and crunchy cookies).
11. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and transfer the cookies into the cooling rack.
12. Let them cool completely.

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Tuna Pancake Roll

I made this Tuna-Pancake Roll few weeks ago (it was last month I think). I never made this kind of dish before and I was surprised that it was more than edible. It was good!! I usually eat pancake for breakfast with some sugar or honey or with some bacon or sliced fruits. Any kind of topping I want. But I never tried to fill it with something and roll it like this.

It is a pancake filled with tuna and mixed vegetables, roll it, and bake it in the oven. It's easy, simple, and kind of unique for me. Even better, people who doesn't have electric oven can make this one as well as long as they have oven toaster.

Actually, the story begin on few weeks ago, when i was doing some shopping with my kids on a local grocery store, my daughter saw a flyer recipe suggestion over there. She took it and asked me if i could make it for her. She assumed that it must be delicious because she read "kids favoriet" on the bottom of the recipe. Well, most of the recipe with those note are usually acceptable and friendly for children.

It has a short recipe on the back of this flyer.

I read the recipe, and it seems easy and affordable. It's good idea for a dinner and beside, i still had some canned tuna at home and some vegetables. I just needed to buy some ready to eat pancake and some other small ingredients. (oh yeah!! Those time I was too lazy to make the pancake by myself.) So, let's get started :)

Ingredients :

• 2 can of canned tuna in olive oil
• 6 whole wheat pancake (Tip : It's a dutch pancake or we call it pannenkoek, not an American pancake)
• 150 grams broccoli, chopped into small pieces
• 100 grams carrots, chopped into small cubes
• white part of 1 leek, thinly sliced
• 3 green onions, thinly sliced
• 150 grams creme fraiche
• 100 grams grated cheese
• some coriander leaves
• salt and pepper

Preparation :

1. Preheat the oven for 180 C (356 F)
2. Take and heat about 3 tbs of oil from canned tuna in a pan.
3. Put all the chopped broccoli and carrot and saute them for about 1 minute or until the vegetables start to become tender.
4. Add sliced leeks and green onion into the pan and stir them again.
5. Drain the tuna from its oil.
6. Add the tuna into the pan and stir it until the tuna is mixed well with the vegetable.
7. Turn off the heat and let it cooled a little bit.
8. Prepare the pancake in a plate or another flat surface.
9. Take about 3-4 tbs tuna mix and put it on the top of pancake. 
10. Roll the pancake and wrap the tuna.
11. Put it on the baking dish with the seam side down. (Tip:  If you do not have a big enough baking dish you can make by yourself a disposable baking dish using aluminium foil and put it on the baking tray)
12. Repeat the process with another pancake and tuna mix.
13. Take about 1 tbs creme fraiche, put on the top of the rolled pancake and spread it just until to cover the pancake.
14. Add some grated cheese on the top of it and sprinkle some chopped coriander leaves.
    
15. Put it into the oven (near the top part of the oven) and bake it for about 5-10 minutes or until the cheese is melted.
16. Remove it from the oven and garnish with freshly chopped coriander and chili pepper.
    
17. Serve it hot with roasted or fried potato and some chili sauce if you like.

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