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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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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Summer vacation project : Sugar cookies

My daughter has summer vacation this month. It's time to make some summer vacation project. We decided that our 1st project is sugar cookies. We will use my cute cookie cutter that I bought last month. (I really want to buy another ones. They are so cute!!).

I found this recipe from  Joy of Baking. So far, this is the best sugar cookies recipe that I've ever made. It's easy to make, not too sweet, soft but crunchy.

Ingredients :

• 195 grams (1.5 cups) All Purpose Flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 114 grams (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, soft and room temperature
• 100 grams (1/2 cup) granulated white sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preparation :

1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt together
2. In a seprate large bowl, whisk butter and sugar until creamy, nice and smooth
3. Add egg and vanilla extract
4. Beat again
5. Add mixed flour into mixed butter
6. Mix them well until smooth dough is formed
7. Divide dough into half, wrap each dough with plastic wrap
8. Put it in the fridge for about 1 hour (or overnight)
9. After the dough is firm enough, take it out from the fridge, let it sit in room temperature for about 10 minutes.
10. Meanwhile, preheat the oven 180 C (350 F) and line the baking sheet with baking paper
11. Lightly flour the counter and the dough and roll out the dough until about 1/5 cm thick 
12. Cut it using cookie cutter and transfer it into baking sheet. 
13. Put all cookies in the baking sheet into preheated oven and bake them for about 10 min or until the edges of cookies are starting to brown
14. Remove cookies from the oven and let them cool.

Tip :  If the unbaked cookies are too soft, put them in the refrigerator for about 10-15 min before starting the baking process. This will prevent the cookies spread out and losing their shape while baking.

My cookies are ready to bake. They are so cute, aren't they? ^^

My cookies are fresh from the oven. Just 10 minutes after baking my daughter and my son already "stole" some cookies from the sheet. I couldn't blame them. They smell so good. Who could resist? Neither could I. 

After making few batch, my daughter wanted to make another shape of cookies. So we made this heart shape cookies, and she sprinkled some colored crystal sugar on the top of them. She made four cookies and she said one for mama, one for papa, one for her little brother,and one for herself. Aaawww.. how adorable she is. :-)

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