How to make: Sugar cookies

Sugar cookies is one of those really simple cookies with tons of icing on them, pictures of kids' favorite cartoons that just makes them smile.  I remembered when I was in elementary school and there would be this once a month thing where parents and kids would be able to have hot foods like A&W and little ceasars pizza brought into the elementary school.  Depending on how much your parents is willing to pay for fast foods, that is what you would get as a lunch.  I never got the awesome sugary stuff, I always just got a burger or one slice of pizza while I watch my friends that would have the whole deal; dessert, drink and all!  I would just sit there with envy.

So for me and my boyfriend's 17th month anniversary together, I decided to go old school and made him some cookies like the girls that was crushing on a guy in a drama. Hopefully this is easy enough to follow.  I didn't take enough pictures I know, but my hands were dirty and there was no one to take pictures for me :(. I sometimes wish I had three hands.

                 Yield: 20 cookies (30 g each, depending on your thickness)    

  [Ingredients for sugar cookies]

 Pastry or all purpose flour                                8 oz.                                 240g

 Baking power                                                    0.07 oz (1/2 tsp.)            2 g

 Unsalted butter, softened                                 6 oz.                                180 g

 Granulated sugar                                              4 oz.                                120 g

 Powdered sugar                                               2 oz.                                 60 g

 Salt                                                                     0.1 oz. (1/2 tsp.)              3 g     

 Egg                                                                    1.6 oz. (1 egg)                 48 g

 Vanilla Extract                                                  0.15  fl. oz. (1 tsp.)           5 mL

1) Sift together flour + baking powder+ powdered sugar and set aside.

2) Cream butter + sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in salt + egg + vanilla. Add flour mixture, beat until combined. 

*Don't over mix or else your cookie will be tough and not pleasant to eat. Over mixing will form too much gluten which gives products structure.  Depending on what you want to make, you have to adjust your method and mixing time*

3) Wrap dough in plastic or place into a container and let it sit in the fridge until firm; approximately 1-2 hours. In the mean time, you can make your royal icing :). 

[Ingredients for Royal icing]

Powdered sugar                                                 1 lb.                                  480 g

Lemon juice or water                                          4 fl. oz.                             120 mL

Corn syrup                                                           2 fl. oz.                              60 mL

Vanilla extract                                                      0.15 fl. oz. (1tsp.)            5 mL

Food coloring                                                      As needed

1) Combine  sugar + lemon juice or water ( i recommend using fresh lemon juice since it cuts the sweetness and you can taste that hint of zestyness when you eat the cookies) + corn syrup + vanilla with a mixer on paddle attachment. Blend on low speed until sugar dissolves and mixture is smooth. Adjust consistency by adding more water or more icing sugar.

2) Apply icing to cookies and let them air dry until they harden.  Cover leftover icing with plastic wrap so it doesn't harden on the surface.   Icing would keep for 3 weeks.

4) Set your oven at 325 degrees F (160 degrees C).

5) Once the dough set, cut the dough in half and leave the rest in the fridge. Roll it out to about 0.3 mm thickness. Take your print outs or in my case, pictures I draw with a sharpie.  These characters are from an anime my boyfriend and I love called "Polar bear cafe".  Its a really kiddie but funny animal and human cartoon. Anyways, cut your dough out and place them on a tray with parchment paper.

6) Bake for approximately 10-12 mins or until light golden brown.  Make sure to keep an eye on them!

 7) Let them cool and star to decorate!

 Here's a little tip when you fill your piping bag and don't have another pair of hands to help you. Place your piping bag in a cup or something tall and round and there you go :D.  You don't even need another pair of hands! You have a brain! Just make sure you either twist the tip of you cut it already or just not cut it until you filled it.

If you wanted to do outlines for your characters, make sure you pipe the black outlines first, let it dry completely then start filling your cookies.  To fill your cookies, place very little icing between the lines and spread it with a toothpick or just tip your icing around. 

And voila.  Okay I have to admit that I could have done a better job with the piping but i was doing it freestyle :(.  Please don't hurt me.  Haha if you look closely, there's a joker panda too :D.

Anyways I hope you guys try this simple recipe out.  The only hard part was the piping and spreading the icing around the outlines.  Other then that, every things was very straight forward. Although the cookie is straight forward, the detail work took about two hours since i was watching t.v. while doing this and the faces were pain in the bum to fill in LOL.

If you guys try this out, leave a comment or link me pictures of your creations :).

Umi at Richmond center's new dining terrace

Not too long ago, Richmond center opened up their new food court that replaced the old Sliver city theater and made the space brand new again.  It was the talk of the town! Everyone just went there to see the new place and I must say that it is very pretty :).  It screams IKEA to me but it is nice.  The bad thing is it has very limited choices since its only one sided compared to before where it was two sides of the mall.  The food choice wasn't that great, it was just the same old fast food restaurants with a new-ish look.  The only place that intriguing to me was this Japanese restaurant called Umi.  Now I have never heard of such place but i do like their concept.

Their logo is this calming leaf green with a eco look to their place.  Their tables in the back are made out of wood and they have chic little white chairs for those that want to sit in their little bar area (no alcohlic drinks though). The place is really big compared to a lot of the other restaurants, they actually have a little drink and dessert bar which i forgot to take pictures of >_<. DOHH~

 Why this Umi place peeked my interest was that they make sushi by order.  They do have boxed sushi already but you also have the choice of taking a little form and tic-ing off the items you want and they will make it for you a la minute! There's really nice :D.  And on the far right side, you can see a man making fresh udon so you are guaranteed that they are serving you fresh udon too! Their udon bowls cost about $7-$9 depending on what you order but I don't find that too bad. My boyfriend and I might have ordered the must boring item on their whole menu but it wasn't too bad.  

Their decor is very chic, simple and clean.  I love it :).  And I love their lighting too! If you look closely, their lights are all shaped like shells.  Thats their logo in the back I believe, some interesting swiggle.

My little condiments; getting ready to eat :).  They have my sriracha sauce, some Japanese spices for rice and some standard soy sauce.

So we ordered the beef teriyaki since it had a little  bit for $7.99.  Not bad :).  There was a little side of edamame, two California rolls, some other type of sushi LOL, vegetable tempera, some sushi rice with beef teriyaki and a side of pickled ginger and wasabi.  Everything was pretty average but I like that I don't have to eat just burgers all the time when i go to a food court.

Right at the last minute, i grabbed a little box of sushi since I was about to order a udon bowl but I didn't really believe that we could finish it :/ so I got a little box of sushi too :).  This one was called "Green Dragon Roll".  Lol that's not the most appealing name but I can understand why they called that.   This type of sushi is just like a California roll, seaweed wrapping the fillings and rice surrounding it on the outside.  The inside has avocado and cucumber and on the top is some BBQ eel with more avocado.  Honestly I didn't really have any time to think so I just grabbed one that had avocado on the top LOL.  I love my avocado :), so yummy and buttery and good for you too! This was average too, nothing special.

My receipt.  I must say though the wait for my food was a little bit long, it was about 15 mins.  For a food court place, that felt like forever! My boyfriend was getting restless waiting LOL.  He came back to me and was like OMG that was at leaaasstt 20 minutes! UGH! I had to show him the receipt to prove to him that it was 15 minutes just to calm him down HAHA.

Last but not least! Dessert! Yes we did get a three course meal at Umi.  We were just sitting on their little bar area and I saw a lot of people ordering these so it peeked my interest. These were advertised for $3.99 so it wasn't so bad!  You got three flavors of "ice" to choose from, mango, green tea and taro.  Naturally me and my boyfriend shy away from taro since its always just powdered and unnatural flavored so it was down to green tea or mango.  We agreed on mango and the fun started from there. I believe they actually make their own "ice" and they put it in a giant machine that rotates the ice and shaves it really nice and thin.  Whats different about this shaved ice is the texture.  It isn't like shaved ice at all, its kind of like a cross breed of sorbet and frozen yogurt! Not dry at all but a little bit too sweet for both of our liking. They had this whole bar where you can choose what toppings you want.  The package included 3 toppings and 1 sauce.  We tried the rainbow jellies which the guy recommended since he said it tasted like gummy bears. We also got some pock and some sugar squishy things which i forgot the name of.  To top off the mountain of sweetness, we had some condensed milk! My favorite!  We sat down and wow :).  We were happy.  The mango was yummy but all together, everything was wayyy too sweet.  We got too sickened by this dessert not too long after but I was a trooper and ate it all :).  

Overall this was a fun experience but I will not be running to Richmond center just to eat here.  This would be a first choice if i was in Richmond center's food court since everything else there was just burgers and fries but yeah, average.