Fresh Mint Macarons for a 3 in 1 Birthday Celebration

One day at the weekend after the 21st of March is always chosen to celebrate 3 birthdays in our family. This year, it was yesterday. We gathered in my sister A's home, had a good Tumpeng Nasi Kuning (yellow rice in a cone shape)for lunch. For the dessert, I made Klappertaart (young coconut tart), Mint Macarons and Tamarind Pineapple Macarons. And the best was... we enjoyed all the good jokes and discussions we had there.

  

I am sorry that I can only share the picture of the Tumpeng Nasi Kuning and not the recipe. In fact, I've never made one. Several times I made yellow rice, but not shaped it into a cone or a tumpeng. Here in Indonesia we cook yellow rice using turmeric, and usually shape it into a tumpeng for a celebration on something as our way to thank the Lord for His blessings and for whatever good thing just happens in our lives. Such for birthday, newly born baby in a family, graduation, house warming party, etc. You see from the picture that it's not simply a cone-shaped yellow rice, but it's elaborated with so many condiments around it to eat Nasi Kuning with.

As its name, Klappertaart was introduced by the Dutch when they occupied our country. Made from eggs and young coconut (when the coconut flesh is still soft and gelatinous). However, I still need work on the recipe to make it better. I used a recipe from an Indonesian cookbook, but it's not as perfect as I want it to. So, I will only post the recipe whenever I am sure that it will make a perfect Klappertaart.

Now the macarons. You have the recipe for my Tamarind Pineapple Macarons, which is my favorite after the Lemon one (you know I like everything sour). Unfortunately, I ran out of palm sugar and used all white sugar powder instead. What a big difference it makes. Flavorwise, the palm sugar one was way much better than the white sugar one. Now I can tell you to use palm sugar for the best result. Trust me.

I decided to try baking Mint Macarons since I often see fresh mints being sold in a small vegetable and fruit store in my apartment. I like the taste and the smell of fresh mints, and imagined how if I make macarons out of it. So, there I was, baking Mint Macarons using fresh mints in its shells and its filling. However, I consider that the flavor is not strong enough, so maybe next time I will add some mint extract into the recipe. But if you like soft and mild flavor of mints... there you have the recipe.

Tamarind Pineapple Macarons

I always want to share with you something unique and it's always my pleasure to experiment with different flavors. The Indonesian culinary has many desserts I can choose to replicate and switch into cupcakes... so many specific ingredients with particularly tasty combinations: palm sugar, coconut and coconut milk, rice, sago, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, vanilla, lemongrass, ginger, tamarind, and a lot of tropical fruits. As you know I like tart and sour tastes, and I like tamarind a lot. So... this time macarons flavored with tamarind. Tamarind is one of the key ingredients for Rujak sauce. Rujak is a different fruits' cut with palm sugar-tamarind sauce as its dipping sauce. The sauce is tart because of the tamarind, sweet from the palm sugar, and some chillis to make it hot.

Tamarind, palm sugar, and pineapple. Those are the main flavors in our macarons this time. The shells is flavored with palm sugar. However, I wasn't sure whether it's possible to add tamarind into the shells, so I just leave it out for this first try. In fact, I wasn't sure with the palm sugar either, but I thought I should give it a try. So for the first try, I substituted about a third of the powder sugar with palm sugar... and it worked like magic!! Then for the filling, it represents the Rujak dessert. So, with tamarind, palm sugar, and fruits chutney or puree. For the fruit, this time I used pineapple, but green sour apple (like Granny Smith apple) will create a good combination also. I incorporated the tamarind in the buttercream filling and pipe the pineapple puree inside the tamarind buttercream.

I was pretty happy with the result. It's sour as I want it to be and since palm sugar is less sweet than the beet/cane sugar, it's resulted in a less sweeter shells. Besides, the palm sugar gives a nice soft palm-sugar flavor to the shells. Perfect.

Sugar Cookies for Eid al-Fitr

In less than a week, the Moslems will celebrate their Eid al-Fitr. I usually bakes cake or cookies as a gift to my best friend who works for the same organisation as I do, and who by chance is also my dearest aunt by marriage. Her husband's nephew married to my sister D. So, I am not really her real niece thou.. in fact, I am one year older than her. But that doesn't matter at all. We have a strong bound in whatever you name it.

Last year, I made her chocolate crinckles cookies and it was a hit among her real little nieces and nephews. One big jar of cookies. This year I decided to bake cut-out cookies for her, like those sugar cookies nicely decorated with royal icing. We often have it in our Christmas, why not do the same for Eid al-Fitr? I bet her nieces and nephews will love them also. My plan was to make shapes of mosque, ketupat (traditional packed rice cooked in little woven young coconut leaves pouch), camels, or anything related to Moslem religion or culture. With more than 80% of the population is Islam, I thought it would not be difficult to find cookie cutter in those shapes. Well, I was wrong! It's easier to find cookie cutters with different shapes of christmas tree, snowman, bell, star... Fortunately, I found some animal cookie cutters, which was perfect as an alternative. Well, it was not the first time I made cut-out cookies, but it was the first time to decorate them. I know I don't have steady hands and fingers, so don't be disapointed to see how "not that neat" I played with those different colors of icing sugar.

Hmmm... yes, I forgot some of the small details.. cats and pandas without noses and mouths..

This is the Sugar Cookies recipe I used, which turned out very nice. I didn't make any changes in the recipe because I was quite convinced with all those nice reviews. I just added more description on some of the instruction to make it clearer for you. It has nice taste with just perfect sweetness, soft, buttery, and crumbled easily in the mouth, but strong enough to hold its shapes when cooked and cooled, and even stronger with the royal icing on them. The dough was a bit difficult to handle and i have to put it in a fridge most of the time and only took some amount to roll and cut in shapes. Well, I live in a hot tropical country anyway...

For the Royal Icing, I followed recipe from this video. The recipe is more than enough to decorate cookies from two or three batches of the above sugar cookies recipe. So if you plan to only bake once, simply make half recipe of this royal icing. Oh, I added two tablespoon of lemon juice for one recipe to give a hint of acid taste to balance the sweetness a little bit.

My favourite, a Red Cross ambulance

... another two layers, and off to go to cheer  the Eid al-Fitr up