Say it with Cookies

Cookies Special Gift

The day will come in maybe a week. Your special person will have an important day in their life. You are in the middle of confusing, what will you give on his/her birthday? You want to give him/her a unique gift and nobody will give the same gift as you. There's a simple answer. Create your own special gift. And the second question rise, what gift should I make? Any gifts idea crossed your mind?

I suggest you should try Cookies Gift! 

First, it's made by your own hand, that means nobody will not have a same gift as yours. The cookies are pure your art creation and flavor. You can create whatever it shape and taste.

Second, because it's made by your hand, your heart will be delivered to them directly.

Third, making cookies is easy and simple. It take less time than searching at store to store to find a flawless and precious gift.

Simple Sugar Cookies Gift

You can make simple sugar cookies and decorate it with colorful sugar icing. To make a simple sugar cookies, you can check our easy sugar cookies recipe. For frosting sugar, you'll need 4 eggs white, 4 cups powdered sugar, 1 tbs vanilla extract, and food coloring. First of all, beat the eggs white until stiff. After that, slowly add the powdered sugar and keep mixing it. Third, add the vanilla extract and beat it until thick. And the last, add the food coloring. Draw your cookies!

Keep in mind, the sugar frosting must not contaminated with the air or it will dry the frosting!

a Simple Tasteful of Happines

Making cookies is not complicated as it seen. On my opinion, it's easier to make cookies than making cakes. There are no special treatment to make delicious cookies. All you have to do is make sure you have perfect ingredients. The ingredients greatly affect whatever food we are making. Perfect ingredient perfect flavor! You better chilled the ingredients first, especially the butter.

Decorated Simple Sugar Cookies

I have simple sugar cookies recipe. I made a lot of it and i think it's still the best simple sugar cookies recipe. To make sugar cookies, you'll need:

200 gr of butter
150 gr of powdered sugar (you can reduce the sugar up to 50gr)
2 medium egg yolks (this will soften the cookies instead of hard dry texture)
50 gr of powdered milk
350 gr of low protein flour such as cake flour or pastry flour

and the direction are:

Buttery Vanilla Sugar Cookies

1. Beat the butter and powdered sugar until soften (about 3-5 min)
2. Add eggs yolk once at a time
3. Add the dry ingredients (powdered milk & flour) and mix it in low speed.
4. Chilled the dough for about 1 hour
5. Roll the dough and shaped it with cookie cutter
6. Bake the cookies on 160 degrees Celcius for about 15 min
7. Remove the cookies from the oven and let cool on wire racks.

Enjoy!

How to Make Pie Crust - Tips

How to Place Pie Crust in Pan

Perfect pastry is flaky, tender, delicate, and not crumbling. To make a good pastry, the cook should be quick and light handed. The flakiness of the crust caused by many particles of fat surrounded and separated by flour. Slow handling caused these particles to melt and blend with the flour to form a solid mass which is hard and tough after baking.

The basic ingredients for making pie crust (pastry) are fat, flour, and liquid. For perfect crust, all the ingredients must be cold, especially the butter! Even the flour must be refrigerated before mixing it and the butter at least have 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Type of fat used in making crust would affect the flavor and flakiness. You can use unsalted butter for the rich flavor and flakiness pie crust.

Mixing the ingredients by hand or you can use food processor. If you want to use food processor, make sure your butter still frozen and stick so the flour wouldn't absorb the water. Adding liquid gradually (4 to 6 tbs for 300gr of flour), so it will just moisten the dough. If you add too much water, the dough will have to be mixed with flour and becoming overworked and tough. If too little water added, the crust will crumbling.

Vanilla Tart Topped with Fresh Strawberry

Use low protein flour such as cakes flour to make the crust. You can substitute cake flour with all purpose flour and add 1 tbs of cornstarch.

The dough should be refrigerated for minimum 1 hour before baking it. Always use a pie weights if you don't want to have too much rising crust while baking.
Enjoy Baking!

What is Bread Flour?

Bread Flour

Gluten Made Bread's Bread

a product made from whole grain of wheat and higher in protein.  Higher protein means higher gluten contained in bread flour. The gluten will give elasticity to dough so the bread will have chewy and light bread. The gluten itself made the dough unite and make it easy to rise. The bread flour use for bread making, and contains more vitamin, protein, and mineral than white flour. The bread flour is not the only ingredients for making bread because it may add a certain heaviness and prevent the dough from rising than white flour.

Bread Flour Substitute
It is not possible to make bread without bread flour. You can't make bread with low protein flour, but you can substitute bread flour with all purpose flour and add a small amount of vital wheat gluten (pure protein / gluten). If you make bread with low protein flour, the dough will not rise and have crumbling texture

What Kind of Sugar Do You Know?

On cooking world the usage of sugar never been forgotten, especially on the dessert menu. As we have known, there are many kind of sugar that we are using on making dessert. There are confectioner sugar, granulated sugar, icing sugar, caster sugar, and also not forgetting, brown sugar. Some people might get confused on the usage of each kind of sugar.

Granulated sugar is a white refined sugar comes in a coarse crystal size. We used to call it table-sugar. We could use it to sweetened our tea, coffee, and other things, and also we can use it in cooking. Caster sugar is more fine sugar than granulated but not as fine as icing sugar. You can make caster sugar by grinding granulated sugar a few minutes until it become super-fine. You can create a beautiful cupcake with soft texture with this caster sugar.


What is powdered sugar?
Powdered sugar is same as confectioner sugar and same also as icing sugar. They are super very fine sugar with a powdery texture. This kind of sugar can dissolve quickly in liquid so that's why icing sugar uses to make buttercream and icing decorating.


What about brown sugar?
Brown sugar made from super fine white sugar combined with molasses. Brown sugar often use to baking such as making sugar cookies, cupcakes, cakes, and many things.

Enjoy!

Butter, Margarine, or Shortening?

Unsalted Butter

Sometimes people get confused when choosing butter or margarine into their recipe. People often used butter instead of margarine for the better taste. But actually we can also use margarine or even shortening and have the same taste.The usage of fat in baking will keep the dry ingredients from loose and hard texture. The fat give the dough moistness and also good taste. On the cooking, we knows  fat as butter, margarine, and also shortening.

Butter is a dairy product made by fermented milk and consist of butterfat, milk protein and fat. Butter usually made from cow's milk, but it also can be manufactured from milk of sheep, goats, buffalo, and other mammals. It will softened on room temperature, so keep it refrigerated!

Shortening

Margarine originally used for substitute butter on the cooking. It is made from refined plant oils and water and has minimum fat content of 80% and also consist of milk. Margarine can be used for spreading, baking, and others cooking.

Shortening usually use for making puff pastry. Shortening is any fat that keep its shape (not melting or softened) in room temperature. Shortening more closely to margarine than butter and has white color. Usage of shortening will make the baked goods light and flaky.

Puff Pastry Dough

Then, you can use all of them for your cooking recipes. But remember to keep it stored well and covered so that the fat won't get broken.  Have a nice cooking!

Tips to Make Perfect Sugar Cookies

Sugar cookies became very popular lately with many various types and flavors. It has so many variation you can try to make it in different way. Each way will have their own taste and texture. Sugar cookie recipe could be easy and sometimes difficult. It's not just the recipe to have the perfect cookie, but it has some tips to make it perfect. Here some tips will help you making the Perfect Sugar Cookies

Measuring  Ingredients

1. Measure the ingredients correctly according to the recipe you are following. Too much flour will make the cookies hard and also dry. You will not get the perfect moisture and tenderness and gets trouble with baking time and temperature.
2. The ingredients should be at room temperature before mixing it. Better use unsalted butter than the salted butter, so you can add salt whatever you want. Do not use a high protein flour, but use the low protein flour and you will have the perfect texture.
3. Use low speed to cream the ingredients. If you wanted a moist cookie (soft cookie base), cream the mixture for a while or until it paste-like. But if you wanted a light cookie, cream the mixture until fluffy (taking longer time to mix it than the moist cookie)
4. Adding the eggs and liquid at low speed so that it can mix properly.
5. When it's time to adding the flour, don't forget to low your mixer! The high speed will ruin the dough (you will have tougher cookies) because flour is very sensitive at speed when mix with the wet ingredients (butter mixture). Mix it just until it combined and do not over-mix it.
6. Chill the dough before baking it for about 1-2 hours to keep their shape and easier to work with. The chilling will allows the dough to relax.
7. Use less flour to roll the dough just until the surface covered with flour. Roll the dough for about 1/8 inch thickness. The thickness will ease you to cut the dough and will get the crisp cookie. If you want the soft cookie, roll it for about 1/4 inch thickness.
8. If you want have same thickness of your cookie, you can use two same thickness strip and place it on the left and right cookie dough. Roll the dough until it has the strip thickness
   

   

   Rolling Dough Trick

9. Bake the same size and same shape cookies on the same sheet so it can be done at the same time.
10. Bake it at 350 degree Fahrenheit for about 10-15 minutes. Take less time for soft cookies about 8-10 minutes.
11. Let the cookies cool completely before you start frosting it.

And that's it. Simple and easy, you can just try it and get the different. Don't forget to enjoy your cooking time! Call your friend and make them to taste your Perfect Sugar Cookies! 

Cute Decorated Sugar Cookies