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 :).

Sushi night at home :D

Who needs to go out to eat when you know how to cook! I love the fact that it is cheaper do stuff yourself, espically if you learn the skill of cooking. No you don't have to be a professional at cooking but it is nice to know the basics so when it comes time to cooking something in your day, it won't be a stressful thing but a fun thing. Today I was hanging out with my boyfriend at home and we had DIY sushi making :D. It turned out great and we had a lot of fun!California style sushi with tomago, salmon and cucumber sprinkled with toasted seasame seeds.

Tomago recipe:
3 eggs
1 teaspoon soy sauce
2 teaspoon sugar

1)Whisk the eggs really well and then add the sugar and soy sauce.
2) Heat your non-stick pan on medium to low heat and add a generous amount of oil to the pan.
3) Pour a light amount of egg onto pan and swirl the egg around the pan to let it cook. Flip it and let it cook for a little bit and start to layer.
4) Roll the egg gently from one side to the other. Don't break it! Turn off the heat.
5) Put egg into plastic wrap. The egg should be in a roll. Wrap the plastic wrap and cover the egg. This will continue cooking the egg on the inside and also give it the shape.
6) Cut it up into half an 1 cm thick pieces or however you want.

Wasabi Fishie :D with pink ginger roses.Salmon and tuna Makizushi (巻寿司)Salmon sashmi with cucumber, washabi, katsuobushi (dried bonito (type of fish) shavings; same stuff they put on top of the takoyaki), nori flakes and Onkonomiyaki sauceSushi cone (Temakizushi) with everything and then some~

So that's it and it only took about and hour or too. We were watching food network too so we kind of got distracted.

Word of advice when making sushi:
-Cover the whole seaweed sheet with rice
-Leave an inch of space from the top of the seaweed so when you roll it, the sushi will seal properly
-Pack the rice so that it won't be all loosey goosey
-Don't put wayyy too much rice. Put about 3 mm of rice and spread it real good :D.