Kaastengel

From the name, it doesn't really give anybody a clue of what it actually is. It is a cheese type of cookie, very famous in Indonesia. Judging from its name, I think it was originated from Dutch, when Indonesia was Dutch colony. That's why, many of our foods now are influenced by Dutch.

To be honest, I was never a fan of salty cookies, and this is no exception. When I think of cakes, cookies, desserts, "sweet" is the first thing that comes to mind. When I was in Indonesia, I don't remember having this cookie very often, although this is one of the expensive type of cookies. I would prefer nastar or any other cookies anytime, any day. But, it was the time I haven't been introduced to the beauty and the art of foods.

Last week, I started my search on this kaastengel (hope the spelling is correct ;) ). There are so many recipes out there and there are a couple of methods too. So, after a careful consideration and thoughts :D, I settled on one, hoping that this will turn out very good and could possibly be the first and the last recipe on my search of the ultimate kaastengel.

Before weekend comes, I was in a cheese hunting for cheese. Traditionally, kaastengel is made with Edam cheese, but Gouda can also be used instead or any other aged cheese. It is sealed in somekind of red wax to preserve it, just like Gouda. For my kaastengel, I used about 80% Edam cheese and 20% Parmigiano Reggiano. I was afraid that the taste of the Edam would be way too strong. If you know this cheese, you would know that it has a very strong smell, odd enough to give me a little doubt of using it when I was shredding it. Some people also use 100% Parmesan instead of Edam, it's a matter of taste. They're both not a cheap cheese though. Use the real thing if you want the best result.

I was very pleased with how it turned out. It is strong enough to hold its shape, crisp enough to give you that crunch, and then it would just melt in your mouth. Maybe next time, I would alter the recipe a little. The recipe doesn't use any powdered milk (one of my favorite ingredients), and I love that 'milky' and buttery taste in my cookies :). For a first timer, I surely give this two thumbs up (four if I can, with my toes :P )

Pineapple and Durian Nastar

Made this nastar last Sunday, right after church. I started at 4pm and finished everything by almost midnight!!!! I know, it's not that many cookies, but imagine if you have to roll each filling into small balls, then wrap it with the dough, make sure they're round and the same size for more than 200 pieces of nastar. Not to mention that you have to glaze each one of them in the middle of baking. I think my back is still aching :).

But anyways, this is the first time I made durian nastar. I made the nastar filling while I was in Indonesia, since durians are much more flavorful there and fresh too (it's almost impossible to get a fresh durian here in the US). It turns out that durian filling is a lot more difficult to be molded. It's soft and a little sticky, even after I refrigerate it for a loooong time. Unlike the pineapple filling, it gets firmed up once it's refrigerated and therefore makes it easier to be molded.

Despite all the history in the making, it was really paid off after tasting the durian nastar (I love the traditional pineapple too by the way). Too bad I was only making a few of them (the tall container). Although I'm somewhat traumatic making nastar by myself after those long hours, I'm excited to make the durian nastar again, only half a recipe though. It would take what..about 4 hours?? :P

Castle Cake

This is the other cake I made last weekend. I was thinking of making my own pillar and the stuff that a castle has, but as usual, I didn't have time (other than two cakes, I had to cook too). So, I bought Wilton castle kit. I though I just need to stick those stuff inside the cake and be done with it. But it came in plain white, undecorated pillar. That means, I still have to spend some time decorating each of them, with buttercream and colored sugar sprinkle.

I guess I'm not that good making kids cake. I don't have the patience of coloring buttercream with different colors, piping those different color buttercream into different shapes, not to mention it's a pain to wash all the bowls with buttercream in it. At the end of the day, I just didn't care about it anymore. The turrets that I've decorated fell and messed up the buttercream decoration and such. I was way too tired that Saturday night that I went to bad anyway although there are still a couple of close friends downstairs. But I got up early to finish the cake.

The cake looked fine before it got transported to the church. It was a disaster. I watched the turrets collapsed one by one with a huge pain. I knew it was gonna happen though, but I just didn't have time to decorate on site. A little part of the cake was ruined and it looked terrible. The weird thing is, I can laugh about it when it happened. I guess I was beyond stressed. Usually, I would literally go crazy if something happened to my cake, even if it just something like "oh, I forgot to put vanilla or liqueur in it", although it would be still perfectly fine.

So I transported the cake and put it inside the nursery room, where my niece's class is. The eight turrets had fallen and I put back the smaller four, putting the bigger four next to the cake wishing that the mom can put it back in the cake when they're ready to cut. After the service, I asked her and she didn't know anything about the other four turrets!! The cake must have been terrible and ugly. It was really messy, I couldn't stand watching it. Luckily, it was for small kids and the birthday girl is my own niece. Kids don't care about perfection right? All they care is that there's a castle cake in front of them and they're about to eat it.

Again, I imagine how much the leftover would be as it was a two-tier cake, way too big for a class of 10 kids plus a teacher and a couple of helper. But when I went to visit, the cake was almost gone! It seems like everybody liked it and so they told other people to try it. So, everybody went into that room. And I didn't get a piece. I know how it tasted like from the scraps I made at home.

The cake has three layers of soft cotton sponge cake in each tier. It has cream cheese mousse for the filling with a thin layer of blueberry paletta underneath each layer of mousse. The whole thing is also covered with cream cheese mousse. Blueberry paletta is a kind of blueberry jam I got from Indonesia when I went back last month. It was a great product. Although the name is "blueberry" and the color is exactly the same purple as the regular blueberry jam you got here, it barely tastes like blueberry. It is very fragrant, tastes and smells like a candy probably. I just love it. I thought some kind of cream cheese filling would be a perfect pair to this blueberry wonder. Judging from the rave reviews, I think I will put this combo in my file. Now, I just need to remember what ingredients I used and how much :)

Summer Fruit Cake

I know I know, Summer is gone for this year and I am too late to make this kind of cake now. But hey, this is one of the advantage of living in California. You can get berries, peach, almost anything all year long, although it may not be as tasty as summer though.

It was my brother's mother in law's and my 3-year-old niece's birthday last week. They were two days apart and both birthdays fell on weekdays. So we decided to celebrate it on Saturday and invite close friends and family members only. I was planning to make two cakes, one for Saturday, and another one for my niece's sunday school at church. For Sunday cake, I was going to make a Castle Cake (more of this later). Since the guest on Saturday party were mostly adult, I decided to make a cake that has a lot of fruits and is not so filling. Besides, this cake has been on my to-make-cake list from the beginning of summer!

So, here it is, 10-in cake with three layers of cotton sponge cake, a layer of vanilla bean pastry cream in the bottom layer, and Grand Marnier chantilly cream(known as whipped cream) with lots of fruits (strawberry, kiwi, mandarin oranges, white nectarine, yellow peach). Then the whole thing is covered with more Grand Marnier cream and decorated with lots of fruits and mint leaves and also green chocolate leaves. If you know me, you'll know that I don't like making a plain vanilla cake with whipped cream filling and frosting (which should be what summer fruit cake/summer cream cake usually). I tried to always put something that'll give some zing or spark to it
(this is why I have lots and lots of liqueur and spirits in my pantry). I also try not to use one kind of filling for 3 layer cakes. I like to combine texture and taste. For the leaves, I used lemon leaves and white chocolate that has been tinted with a little green coloring.

By the way, this cake is tall! and I mean TALL for it's size! I was pretty sure that there will be plenty leftovers as the birthday lady is old already (and she doesn't really eat lots of cake) and the guests were also the kind of people that don't care too much about cake. Besides, they're going to be pretty full after the dinner feast. But I was wrong! The cake was gone, except for one slice. I was going to try that cake the day after (as I was quite full). The guests weren't that many people, so each person get a huge cake, probably the serving of two or two and a half portions (remember, the cake is tall too). They liked the cake so much, even the birthday lady finished her plate. I didn't see any plates with even a little cake leftover in the trash can, even the kids!

I wish I can show you guys the inside of this cake, but it was gone too fast. The quality of the picture is not that great either. It was taken at night just before the guest had arrived. So, it's a little "yellow-y". The sad part is, when I was going to eat the one slice leftover cake in the fridge after coming from work, I found an empty plate with cream on it. Hik...hik...somebody ate it. So, I didn't get the eat the cake AT ALL! how sad. But I guess I should be happy that they like it. That's the biggest accomplishment and prize that a baker can have :).

Proll Tape Keju (Fermented Cassava Cake with Cheese)

Just so you know, I haven't disappeared from the surface of the earth. I'm still here and just got back from my trip about 4 days ago. I haven't baked for more than a month now and my hands are itchy to mix some batter, weigh ingredients, fold and whisk, all those baking stuff (except the washing dishes part).

I brought back some fermented cassava from Indonesia (you can google it to see what it is, in case you don't know). I love this stuff, although I can't eat much in one sitting. You could probably get drunk if you eat too much of it :). It produces alcohol as it ferments. After a few days, it got too 'mature' that it's too strong and soft to be eaten plain. I've been dying to make some cake using this stuff, but never had the privilege to do it. I even tried to make my own fermented cassava twice but they're both failed. I was so excited to find lots of fermented cassava while I was in Indonesia (well, of course. it's originated there, duh) and couldn't wait to make something out of it.

So, here is my first fermented cassava cake. I'm not sure if it can be called a cake. The texture is very different from a normal sponge cake. It's super moist because of the addition of the cassava. It's not a "dry" type of cake, instead it's dense, yet moist and soft, not to mention very fragrant. I couldn't decide which kind of cake I wanted to make because there are so many things you can do with it, but I finally settle on this type of cake, adding some shredded "the-milky-creamy-and slightly sweet" processed cheese that we all love. I still have a little bit of left the cassava in the fridge and I'm excited to make another version of cake using this :)

Guava and White Chocolate Mousse Cake

This is the last cake/dessert I made before going on vacation tonight for 5 weeks (yes, you read it correctly, 5 whole weeks!!!). I'm not sure if I will be able to bake or post anything during those weeks, but will try to.

This is a guava and white chocolate mousse cake. I made this combo once before, but wasn't very satisfied with the guava flavor in the mousse. I used guava juice and reduced it to about 1/4 of the original amount, but still the guava taste wasn't there. About a month ago, I found a frozen guava juice concentrate and of course I excitingly grabbed one with a hope of this is the answer of my guava experimentation ;).

So, since the name is "guava concentrate", I thought that I won't need much of it, but I was WRONG. It is thick, pink, and sweet with a little tartness, but the guava taste is not strong at all!!! I ended up using the whole tub (about 400g) and just a little cream for single layer of 8-in filling. The texture (before set) was liquid-y. I've never made a mousse this thin before and I was scared that the gelatin I put in the first place wasn't enough to set the mousse. I put the leftover guava mousse in a glass and refrigerate it to see if it would set and the morning after, and it did (so yay!), my fear was conquered.

Decided to use white chocolate for decoration, but it was a pain. It's quite humid and warm lately, and the sensitive white chocolate just not being so cooperative. Everytime I take it out of the fridge for 2 seconds, it would just soften. So, I scraped them all off and re-melt it again and made a thicker decoration. This one was better.

So, here it is. Again, it's decorated just a couple of minutes before I had to leave for work. I didn't even had time or bother to smooth out the top. Put a ribbon around, and there you go.
The guava color is very pretty (although I think it's too pinky for guava). The flavor is somewhat misleading. One of my friends even though that it's a raspberry mousse (duuuhhh???), well, the color is the same as raspberry, and the tartness is the same too, but come on. I guess the search for the perfect guava mousse doesn't end here. The overall taste is still great, but I would keep continuing my search for the real pink guava puree to make this mousse.

Mini Soft Bread

It feels like it has been forever since the last time I made a bread. Last weekend, I had some free time (amazingly) and I decided to make some bread for my niece's and nephew's breakfast. I just got some new paper cup for individual bread and I couldn't wait to use it.

This is the same recipe as the Soft Bread I made before, but just shaped differently. I also substitute the water with cream. I had to add more than what the recipe called for because the texture between the two is different. I filled it with raisin, homemade pineapple jam (my nephew's fave), cheese, chocolate, bananas, the usual fillings that are always available in the house. I didn't know how much dough I need to put inside each cup, so they're not as high as I wanted. But who cares, as long as my niece and nephew are happy, I'm happy too :)