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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