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 :).

Homemade ice cream

I actually learned to make real ice cream in school. I would say this is actually really close to the Haagen dazs but I would say for this recipe, I would put a little bit of vermouth in it so it doesn’t harden so much.  Why would you put alcohol into ice cream you ask? Well if you guys didn’t know, alcohol cannot freeze.  You can put alcohol into the freezer, and it will never in a million years freeze.  Another tip is to cool the mixture completely down so that it can work fast in the machine.  Long long time ago when I was a kid, I tried the ice cream machine my mom bought but it didn’t work and it just tired out into frozen milk.  That didn’t go well LOL.  So I was quite excited when this ice cream worked out! Its fattening though so beware XD.

[Ingredients]

7 egg yolks

200 g sugar

500 mL milk

250 g whipping cream

Coffee beans (optional, depending on what flavour you want; I will include more flavour options down below)

1) If you are going to make coffee ice cream, grind your coffee beans to a medium grind and heat up your milk + cream.  Turn your heat down to medium low and let the coffee infuse into the milk and cream mixture.

 2) Whisk together sugar + egg yolk in a bowl.

 3) Once the cream + milk is done infusing, tamper the eggs. Tampering means to heat up the egg yolk mixture slowly and not suddenly so that the eggs won’t scramble. To do so, ladle some cream into the egg yolk mixture while whisking.  Keep doing so until you are done adding all the cream.

 4) Transfer the mixture back into the pot and turn the heat back on medium low.  Make sure you don’t burn your cream or over cook your eggs! This mixture is very very delicate! NEVER BOIL THIS MIXTURE or you will have to start over again. Heat until it coats the back of the spoon.  To taste if it is done, dip your spoon into the mixture and if you can create a clean crisp line like the picture above, its done.

 5)  Cool the mixture down with a bed of ice until it is completely cool.  Put it into your ice cream machine and let the magic happen.  My ice cream machine is Cuisineart Frozen Yogurt- Ice cream & sorbet maker which sells now for about $59. This is a very old model but I think it works nicely, don’t need anything fancy if it gets the job done. It took about 30 mins for the ice cream to form, you’ll know when you see it you ice cream eaters :D.

6) Let the ice cream rest in the freezer overnight and then its time to eat your heart out  :D.



Over flavour options

-Vanilla : Add one vanilla pod into the pot when heating up the milk and cream.  To do so, slice the pod in half and using the back of the knife, scrap all of the beans and mix into the cream + milk.

-Chocolate + Rum: Prepare recipe of vanilla ice cream; eliminate vanilla and use 1/3 less sugar, add 100 g melted semi sweet chocolate and 30 mL dark rum.

-Maple + pecan: Same recipe, eliminate sugar and vanilla. Add 200 mL  real maple sugar once mixture has cooled. Fold in 150 g chopped pecans once mixture is removed from machine.

-Strawberry ice cream: Same recipe, eliminate 150 mL fresh strawberry coulis. Once frozen, & removed from machine, add 100 g diced fresh strawberries.

-Mango: Same recipe, eliminate vanilla and 150 mL of cream.  When picture is cool, add 150 mL mango puree (can buy them in a can). Once frozen and removed from machine, add 100 g diced fresh mango.

-Lemon: Same recipe, replacing vanilla for 60 mL freshly squeezed lemon juice and 5 mL grated lemon zest.

-Pineapple: Same recipe, eliminate vanilla and reduce sugar by 100 g. Cook 150 g of diced ripe pineapple with 150 g sugar and 100 mL water until syrupy. Puree pineapple mixture and stir it into the ice cream mix.

-Hazelnut: Same recipe , eliminate vanilla.  Add 100g finely chopped roasted hazelnuts. After roasting, place hazelnuts in cloth and vigorously rub to remove skins.

-Pistachio: Same recipe, eliminate vanilla. Add 100 g very finely chopped peeled pistachios and 30 mL almond liqueur.  To peel, blanch in boiling water and shock in ice water then peel.