How to Decorate Anniversary Cake

All are edible except those toothpick :)

Maybe this is my last post in 2014 and also 1st post on 2015. Because İ was planning to post this lemon cake decoration for #YKMK challenge #8 for their 1st anniversary.

As İ mentioned in my previous post about this YKMK (Your Kitchen My Kitchen) is a Foodie community based in İndonesian language. 

And this very early 2015, 1st Jan.. they celebrates their 1st anniversary. And for celebrating it they gather an event challenge calls "B'day Cake". Every contestant should present 1 decorated cake--widely range from any cake decorating idea and ingredients e.g fondant, butter cream, ganache, whipped cream, etc... see the rules for joining this event... Hurry.. it's just starting and will end on last January 2015.

MOİST LEMON CAKE and tip how to bake cake flat

İf you want to make a cake to decorate later or even stack them later. You don't want to remove too much uneven risen swell cake to form it flat, right? Nice and even surface cake is everybody's ideal cake to decorate with.
İ saw on internet you can use a pan with a lid to make even your cake surface during baking. Or there is "strip bake even" from w*lto*. This strip you can Wrap around your pan during baking.

So İ want to have that nice flat surface too on my cake but İ don't purchase those things. So İ saw some people make their own strip.. yes, That's it. İf you don't have ready to use (and fancy) w*lto* "strip bake even" you can make it by your own. All you need is just old kitchen towel. Cut lengthwise (depend on your pan size)-- give some spare, you can always adjust the length later. Just before baking dump that towel with water and Wrap it around your baking pan.  And other thing you will need is a pin to secure the towel after you Wrap it on your pan. That's it...try it..and you will get perfect flat cake.

Now let's talk about my moist and yummy lemon cake. Today İ bake a lemon cake for decorate later. Easy yet delish cake you'll ever bake..
Let's go to the kitchen.... ^,^

Lemon Curd Recipe II



Salam everybody. Merhaba from Turkiye.

My today post is my favorite one.....lemon Curd. Yes, this is my fave for anything. İ use it for jam on my soft bread. İ use as filling on my choux pastry, or my donut. And İ dip my croissant  in it ! Believe me, that so good! ^,^

This lemon curd is also my second recipe beside my other one here. And my today lemon curd İ use recipe from  here... İ think both recipe are great... you can use whatever you want if you will try to make your own lemon curd.

İ love lemon. No question about it cause İ know if you do love lemon too..you know how this shiny yellow fruit can give you many good things. Use it for infused water lemon--Like İ do every morning. Or put inside your hot tea (Love it!). Drink lemon juice with hot water and rock sugar=healthy . And İ love to make them in my cake recipe. Check my previous lemon cake recipe here.

Okay..okay ... you all know many benefits of this yummy sour fruit..now let's make this lemon curd.. try it also and tell me how you like it.

Apple Strudel recipe from phyllo sheet

İ love apple.. specially green one..there's sour a bit sweet in it. Back few years ago.. İ remember İ ate green apple almost everyday before İ eat anything in my breakfast time. That's why there was always apples stock in my fridge. Nowadays İ still love to eat apple but if it's not season you hardly find any apple here... there is, but with triple or four time more expensive than when it's season.

Kimchi / 김치

Kimchi (hangul: 김치 Korean pronunciation: [kimtɕʰi]; English pronunciation: /ˈkɪmtʃi/), also spelled kimchee or gimchi, is a traditional fermented Korean side dish made of vegetables with a variety of seasonings. It is often described as spicy and sour. In traditional preparation kimchi is often allowed to ferment underground in jars for months. There are hundreds of varieties of kimchi made from napa cabbage, radish, scallion, or cucumber as a main ingredient.

The earliest references to pickled vegetables in East Asia are found in the Chinese Xin Nan Shan 信南山 poem of theShi Jing (詩經), which uses the character 菹 or 葅 (Korean "jeo", modern Mandarin Chinese "ju1"). The term ji was used until the pre-modern terms chimchae (hanja: 沉菜, lit. soaked vegetables), dimchae, and timchae were adopted in the period of the Three Kingdoms of Korea The word then was modified into jimchi, and is currently kimchi.

Early kimchi was made of cabbage and beef stock only. Red chili, a New World vegetable not found in Korea beforeEuropean contact with the Americas, was introduced to Korea from Japan after the Japanese invasions (1592–1598) and became a staple ingredient in kimchi, although its use was not documented until the 18th century. Red chili pepper flakes are now used as the main ingredient for spice and source of heat for many varieties of kimchi. In the twelfth century other spices, creating flavors such as sweet and sour, and colors, such as white and orange, were added.

Kimchi is Korea's national dish. During South Korea's involvement in the Vietnam War its government requested American help to ensure that South Korean troops, reportedly "desperate" for the food, could obtain it in the field; South Korean president Park Chung-hee told U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that kimchi was "vitally important to the morale of Korean troops".It was also sent to space on board Soyuz TMA-12 with Yi So-Yeon after a multi-million dollar research effort to kill the bacteria and lessen the odor without affecting taste.

Source: Wikipedia
For more information about Kimchi you can visit here.

For my Kimchi post today İ copy from Maangchi.com (Cooking Korean Food) with minor adjustment.

Churros with Chocolate sauce

Frankly speaking İ never eat churros before, even there are some counters in Jakarta, cıty İ was living in before, İ didn't had intention to taste it. But after some my FB friends make by them self recently it finally tickling me... So İ'm very much curious about it. İ search what churros is.. how's the recipe and try to find out some people opinion on their blog describe how it taste.... And again-as always- wikipedia become my source to find it more ^,^

During my recipe searching İ found some recipe claimed Mexican churros while some other write about Spanish Churros.. According to wikipedia the origin of this churros is unclear. One theory is they were brought to Europe by the Portuguese. The Portuguese sailed for the Orient and, as they returned from Ming Dynasty China to Portugal, they brought along with them new culinary techniques, including modifying the dough for You tiao also known as Youzagwei in Southern China, for Portugal. However, they modified it by introducing a star design because they did not learn the Chinese skill of "pulling" the dough (the Chinese Emperor made it a capital crime to share knowledge with foreigners). As a result, churros are not "pulled" but rather extruded out through a star-shaped die.

Another theory is that the churros was made by Spanish shepherds, to substitute for fresh bakery goods. Churro paste was easy to make and fry in an open fire in the mountains, where shepherds spend most of their time.

And about the taste and texture, some people it's refer to donut taste with cinnamon. But after check mostly recipe -- and finally İ made by my self-- İt's more on fried pastry with sugar cinnamon... What do you think?
Anyway, in fact now İ like churros and definitely it's perfect friend during my chill day and best friend accompany me during my 'book time' alone after my kid sleeping, with hot coffee latte, in silent night :)

For my first adventure of churros I decide use recipe from mowielicious.com here. No spesific reason. İ saw many recipe almost same in ingredients and method. Maybe next time İ will try Martha Steward's which use milk instead of water. 
And here the recipe....

Stolen picture ..Stolen Recipe...not link back...çalıntı fotoğraflar.

Making  a blog page it's not as easy as you think..especially cooking blog. There are many effort we put there. We trial error of some recipe, then make "report" for our reader so they can take some learn and evaluations from our failure. So it's not just write recipe that we never really try in our kitchen then we can easily take somebody else' photos.

And if we were success with our recipe..still we make so many effort to photograph them..edit those picture ..make a file ..then present them to our audience/ reader so our reader-again- can take some learn and evaluation from it...YES!! WE ARE WORKİNG to make our page !

But how do you feel if you find your recipe or your photograph suddenly on other'page without our permission or even didn't link to us...and worse is: taken our photo work for their own commercials purpose? What will you do?

İt often happens to me. Sometimes directly İ comment that post which content my work then link to my page--mostly they delete my comment but still continue using my photo work...İt's truly annoying! some other time İ email them to delete my photo work or at least link to my page blog. yes..this way also sometimes we deal with stubborn person..sometime if İ'm lucky İ get positive respond from them... But still it's annoying right? We can not all time randomly googling our own post to see who use our work without permission or link to us.

And here some of my photo work which being used by others without my permission. İ show their link also for you. İ will not take down those picture until they contact me personally or comment in this post to say sorry and remove the picture they use.

For now İ only googling randomly those my 2 posts and found that..Who knows how many more İ don't see it.
So.. until they didn't say sorry or ask permission to me İ will not take those pictures down.

My email: benim.citra@gmail.com

Cupcake flower bouquet recipe. #cupcakebouquet and #friendship

Hello again..how are you?? Any plan for your weekend? Me..İ will just relax stay home with my little fam. My little angel is a bit sick this whole week... cold and got red and itchy skin like allergic symptom--main reason we don't hang out outside as every weekend.

Well..İ hope you are having precious time also with your family.

Now İ will talk about my today's post. This weekend post is flower cupcake bouquet. İ was so exciting when one of my friend text me message that she will give something to her dearest friend. They met when my friend worked in Turkey..now my friend already back to İndonesia. But seems their relationship develop into close and best friend. Best friend between two continental. Yes, a distance doesn't cut a friendship.... 

She ask me to make something special, unusual yet pretty and touchıng. Presenting friendship and caring. We talked many ideas then İ gave her this cupcake flower bouquet idea. She agree..then...voallaa..! İ did it ^,^

Homemade Playdough DIY (no Cook)

My lil girl looks easy to get boring one... She was exciting when she had new toys for the first time. But then after twice, three or four time plays with that toys she will neglect it right away...
İ do not know if you moms out there have same fact like mine ^,^

But İ always try to make her busy and learn much more things though... And this is one of many other things I do for her..make her play dough. İf you have lıl kid who still put anything on her mouth, maybe you must start to try make your own playdough for them because you know exactly what ingredients you put in ıt...This play dough still save accidentally get in toddler's mouth even the taste not very nice for them to swallow it ^,^

 What you need:

Plaited Coconut Pandan Bread / Aneka Kreasi Roti

Joining a group/ club could be very fun. It can be cheer up a bit our boring days sometimes (^,^) and sometimes we can find some new friends from those groups and of course a lot of new experiences we get from them. New point of view, new experiences, and who knows..new challenge! (^,^)
For that we must join a group which has same as our interest or hobbies. Just like recently I did-I join a group based on cooking and baking-- as my hobby, named "Your kitchen-My Kitchen" from Facebook page. It's a group to whom enjoying their time in kitchen cooking and baking. For culinary lover across the globe. This group wants to introduce especially Indonesian culinary to the world.
You must do same thing especially if you have a blog page, beside can increase your page's reader (stat), joining one or two or more group had more positive things more than I mentioned above (^,^)

What I like about this group is they regularly gathering an event challenge to their member. And more fun is they provide some gift/ reward for the winner!...yyyaaiiii ! (^,^) ...who doesn't like gift? But for me it's more on that challenge thing--as I always mentioned, I love challenge ^,^ And this time YKMK (Your kitchen-My Kitchen) make an event challenge: BREAD !

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” 

― Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym

Spaghetti Shrimp Scampi

Hello Everybody..Hello December... (^,^)

Nothing can break cold situation between two strangers but talking about weather, right? I mean when you meet somebody totally new in same room, you don't know each other and you both have nothing to do but waiting something which is boring us. What do you think? What would you do or say if you were in that situation above?

Well...talking about weather, it was soft and cold rain welcoming December here in Bursa, Turkey...I mean the rain continuously since a day before. Not heavy rain though..just soft. I think the snow will come very soon. I didn't have any intention to go out or what so ever. Unfriendly weather for me (as tropical person) and especially for my kid. What to do.... nothing than play with my daughter inside as usual and made us one easy yet simple food for our self ^,^ . 

Beside I made hot chocolate drink mix (which I will post here very soon) I made this Spaghetti with shrimp scampi. Cloudy outside makes me a little hesitate to make more complicated meal than this ^,^

Serve 3

Ingredients: