Cauliflower Pizza Base

Our children love pizza and we usually buy ready-to-eat pizza. We get our pizza, either from the supermarket freezer section, cooling section, or local pizza restaurant. Years ago, or maybe decades ago, I have made my own pizza a couple of times. However, it is not a priority anymore, since Indonesian and Asian food is more difficult to find here.

Last week, I saw cauliflower at the supermarket near us and suddenly decided to try to make home made pizza with cauliflower as the based. I have tried making cauliflower rice substitute. The cauliflower rice is nice but the work and the mess was unbearable for me. However, I was tempted to try making pizza base from cauliflower. I assumed that it should be healthier than the normal pizza base.

My oldest child loved it and finished around 5 pieces. However, my youngest did not seem to enjoy it a lot. He finished two pieces with difficulty. For me, it is fine. It definitely, however, different than the pizza base made from flour. But if we do it correctly, the pizza base is still crusty with a bit nutty taste from the cauliflower.

Ingredient
1 cauliflower
185 gr mozzarella (this is one package of local mozzarella I used)
4 tbsp grated cheese
1 tsp salt
2 eggs


Method
1. Put the cauliflower floret into the food processor and process the cauliflower until it forms sand like or rice like texture

2. Put the processed cauliflower into a bowl with cover that can be used for microwave. Microwave the cauliflower for 4 minutes (I used 900 watts)

3. Take it out from the microwave and when it has cooled down, put it in the kitchen textile that can be used to pressed the water out of the cauliflower. Make sure that the cauliflower is dry enough, because if you do not press the water out sufficiently, the pizza base will be crusty. Instead it will be like a wet bread texture

4. In a bowl, mix the cauliflower, pieces of mozzarella, grated cheese and the eggs, until it forms a dough

5. Arrange the pizza dough on the baking tray that has been covered by baking paper. Make sure that the base is not too thin and not too thick

6. Preheat the oven 200 Celcius and bake the pizza base for 12-15 minutes, or until the sides are quite brown

7. After that, take the pizza base out of the oven and put the toppings. Put it back again into the oven for around 7  minutes.

This is how our pizza looks like: 

After we took it out of the oven, we add extra basillicum leaves and rocket salad leaves.

I think, when I have the mood I may try to make it again. But for now, I will just run to the nearest pizza place or supermarket. 

Crispy Almond Cheese

It always starts with Sinterklaas celebration, followed by all other celebrations, until the New Year. This is always a busy period for me. A lot of preparation, cakes, cookies, or serving others' needs and want. Usually, I will have a lot of egg whites left over and I will have to use it to whip up some other dishes or food using the left over ingredients, especially because I HATE throwing food away. For me, it is a sin. There are people with difficulty to find food, so we have to be responsible with how we use our resources.

One of the way to use up my left over egg whites is making crispy almond cheese cookies. This one is a slightly different version of Indonesian traditional cookie called "cat tongue" or "lidah kucing".

Ingredients
200 gr egg whites
200 gr fine granulated sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla
2 gr salt
100 gr cake flour
100 gr butter (soft, almost melted butter)
100 gr grated cheese (old cheese is better)
1 tsp baking powder


Method
1. Mix the egg whites, sugar, and vanilla.
2. Add the sifted cake flour and baking powder, mix well.
3. Add the soft (almost melted) butter - at room temperature, and mix well.
4. Add half of the cheese and mix well.
5. Prepare the oven, 150 degree Celcius, and the pan, use baking paper or silicon mat to cover the baking tray/pan.
6. For each crispy cookie, drop 1 tsp on the baking paper and spread it in circle movement.
7. Sprinkle each crispy cookie dough with almond flake and grated cheese.
8. Bake for 12-15 minutes, depends on your oven.
9. Repeat for the rest of the dough.

My children and husband love this crispy cookie so much. It is a laborious work, but I find it satisfying looking at their happy face. My children could not stop eating this. Once, I brought this for a Christmas party with friends, with the intention to share. Unfortunately, when everybody was busy greeting and chatting with each other, my youngest found his way to the serving bowl and finished almost everything.

Oreo Cake Pop

This year, I would like to be more "relax" with all the end of the year festivities. It started from the Sinterklaas (note: It is NOT Santa Claus celebration!), our son birthday party with some of his school friends (we did it before the school vacation), the school Christmas brunch, the school Christmas market, the "traktatie" at school (birthday treat at school), the actual family celebration of our son's brithday, and Christmas celebration.


This year, I did not bring fancy food to the school Christmas brunch. It was something I bought from the shop. Only the birthday treat, I would like to present something presentable. This year, it is cake pop. The no-bake oreo cake pop. I am not a fan of sweet treat at school, but for once, I think this will make our oldest happy. Peer pressure is quite big.


It is not difficult to make, and I got some tips in dipping the cake pop into the melting candy. This is my FIRST experience with cake pop. The melting candy I bought is only from local supermarket. It works quite well.


I am not sure if the children love it, because the kindergartener here, according to me, is too fussy, too choosy and too spoiled in some ways. Believe me, many of them really talk back to adults. However, they can be very nice sometimes. It might only be a cultural difference.


Anyway, the oreo cake pop, save me the baking trouble. It took me in total around 2.5 hours to produce around 30+ cake pop, exclusive the cooling of the cake before I dipped the cake into the candy. The results? They are not very professional yet, but at least, it looks quite presentable.

The birthday boy to be? He seems happy to be able to treat his friends.
Below, you can find the recipe using around 20 pieces of oreo cookies.

Ingredients
20 pieces of oreo cookies original (with the cream)
185 gr cream cheese
melt candy or chocolate chips

cake pop sticks

Method
1. Crush the oreo cookies using food processor including the cream between the cookies
2. Add half part of the cream cheese
3. Combine the cream cheese and oreo to form a dough-like consistency. Add cream cheese when necessary to achieve dough-like consistency
4. Form the dough into small balls (I used medium size ice cream scoop to help me portioning the dough)
5. Keep the cake in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours
6. Melt the candy or chocolate as the direction on the packaging
7. Cover about 0.75 cm of the sticks with the melt candy and stick it into the cakes. Let it cool for a while
8. Cover the cake pops with the melt candy/chocolate
9. Decorate the cake pops with sprinkles or other decoration

 

Pumpkin Roll Cake

I still have some stock of pumpkin. I bought them a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to make soup and pumpkin based cake. However, because of the usual new priority around the house and with the children activities and demands, I had to cancel my plan several times.

Last weekend, I pushed myself to try pumpkin roll cake recipe. After searching and comparing some recipes, I combined some recipes and end up with the final recipe I used in this posting. If you are a fan of Swiss roll cake, please be warned that this roll cake is not the soft type like the Swiss roll. This one is more similar to carrot cake texture. That is why, the cake should be made thin, to avoid the cake to break.

For the recipe below, I used 2 Lapis Surabaya pans, size 26 cm x 26 cm. The result is optimal. Since you will get two thin cakes, which will yield smaller roll cakes. The small serving portion is, in my opinion, a good balance to the "heaviness" of the cake.

I did not expect my children will love this cake, but they do love it. Each of them can finish 3 thin slices of the roll tart for dessert. I think this is a nice variation to the carrot cake that I always made a few years ago.

Ingredients
100 gr butter - soft, room temperature
200 gr sugar
3 eggs
100 gr cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
200 gr pumpkin puree
1 tbsp pumpkin spice or   (1/2 tsp ground cinnamon + 1/8 tsp ground cloves + 1/4 tsp ground ginger + 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg)

For the filling
185 gr cream cheese (1 package)
60 gr butter, soft room temperature
100 gr powder sugar

Method
1. Beat the butter and sugar until it is light and fluffy.
2. Add the eggs one by one and mix until the eggs are well incorporated.
3. Add the pumpkin puree and mix until well incorporated.
4. Add the cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, and pumpkin spice. Mix it with lowest speed until the mixture uniform.
5. Heat the oven 180Celcius
6. Pour the batter into two pans 26cm x 26 cm or slightly smaller.
7. Bake for around 15 minutes until the top of the cake springs back when touched. Do not forget to check regularly and swap the position of the pans when necessary.
8. Remove immediately from the oven and the pan, and let the cakes cool down on a wire rack. Some recipes will recommend rolling it first, but I found it still quite easy to roll the cake when it is cold even without pre-rolling it.
9. Filling: mixed all the filling ingredients until the mixture is smooth.
10. Move the cake to a clean baking paper sheet. Spread the filling on one side of the cake.
11. Start rolling the cake from one side. Wrap it with the baking paper sheet and another layer of cling wrap.

Store it in refrigerator until you want to serve it. I usually take it out of the refrigerator at least half an hour before I serve it. However, my boys are usually impatient and cannot wait. Many times they will just eat it directly.

Cheese Stick Cookie (Kaasstengel)

I grew up eating this cheese stick made either by my mom or my grandma. I love it and I took it for granted. Any time I wanted it, I always got it. Sometimes I helped them to make this, but I did not see it as hard work. It was fun. Other time, when they did not have time to make it, we could just buy it somewhere. We could find from the not-so-good quality (using salt instead of good cheese) or the good quality ones.


Last vacation, my children were pampered by the grandparents. They also enjoyed this cheese stick and another type of cookie with pineapple filling. The cheese stick is easier to make. So, when my children were begging me to make the cookies after we were back to the Netherlands, I decided to just make the cheese stick. This one is Indonesian version, because the Netherlands version is very different. It is difficult to explain the different of the texture and taste, but the Dutch version, in most recipes, uses puff pastry sheet, while the Indonesian version uses all-purpose flour.


Make sure that you use an old cheese type and not the young cheese type. It makes the taste different.


Ingredients
300 gram grated old cheese + 100 gram extra for topping
350 gram all-purpose flour
250 gram butter, soft and room temperature
1 tsp salt
5 egg yolk

2 egg yolk for egg wash

Method
1. Beat the butter and egg yolk until it becomes thick (almost) white mixture for a few minutes.
2. Add the flour, salt and cheese in a few steps and knead the dough until everything is well mixed. You can also use hand in this process. It is not as hard as kneading bread. (Warning: do not over mixed. If you do over mixed, the dough will become oily and the result is not crunchy)
3. Roll the dough using a pin roll until the dough reaches a uniform thickness.
4. Cut the rolled dough into sticks and arrange them on the baking pan. (I used baking paper as liner).
5. Brush the cheese stick with the beaten eggs and sprinkle them with the extra grated cheese
6. Heat the oven 170Celcius. Baked the cheese sticks for around 20 - 25 minutes, depends on your oven. I baked two baking pan together, and I changed the position halfway.

Fresh from the oven

8. Take the baking tray out of the oven and let the cheese sticks to cool down.
9. Store the cheese sticks in the air tight container.

Now, you can enjoy it with a cup of warm tea.

Sweet Potato Curry with Cauliflower Rice

One night, after the children were already asleep and the laundry has been done, we sat in front of the television for a half an hour. I managed to watch part of the Jamie Oliver show and was interested in the sweet potato curry and cauliflower rice. So, I googled it in the internet and found a few similar recipes and the next weekend I went to market to buy the ingredients. It is quite interesting for me, cauliflower as rice!! It has fewer calories and the taste was comparable to couscous.

The children were not amazed, however. They preferred the more "normal" food, rice with chicken curry. But, they had no choice other than to finish the sweet potato curry. Once in a while, vegetarian food is also good, not only for our health but also for our environment.

The downside of cooking this is the mess. If I cook normal rice, I only need to put the rice in the rice cooker and let it cooked by itself. But with cauliflower rice, I have to put it in the food processor part by part because of the size of my food processor. So, that is why it was quite messy.The cauliflower rice itself had a nutty taste. It was definitely not real rice, but I could enjoy it. It is surely an interesting dish for me.

Here is the adaptation of the recipe.

Sweet Potato Curry Ingredients (served around 16 portions)
2 big Sweet potato (wash it clean and peeled; cut the sweet potato into cubes around 2x2 cm)
1 big pink onion (I love the mild taste - cut)
3 cm of grated ginger (I used 1 tsp ginger powder)
1 can of 500 gram chickpeas (drained)
6 tomatoes (chopped)
500 gram tomato puree
3 tbsp Rogan Josh paste
300 gram Spinach
200 ml coconut milk (I used Kara) + 400 ml water
1 handful Coriander stalk and leaves - chopped
brown sugar to taste

Method
1. Heat the oil and brown the onion.
2. Add the sweet potato and cook it for around 5 minutes
3. Add other ingredients except the coriander, sugar and spinach.
4. Cook for around 15 minutes until the sweet potato is tender.
5. Add the coriander stalk.
6. Add sugar and salt to taste.
7. Cook until the sauce is thick and add the coriander leaves and spinach.
8. Serve it with the cauliflower rice.

If  you want to freeze part of it, keep it in a plastic container in portions after it is cool.

Cauliflower rice
Ingredient: 1 big cauliflower and olive oil.
Method: cut the floret and process it with food processor. Sprinkle the cauliflower rice with a bit of olive oil. Bake it for 10 minutes in oven, 180 Celcius. Do  not forget to turn the cauliflower rice halfway of the baking time to avoid it getting burned. The rice can be kept in the refrigerator. Just heat it in the microwave (highest heat) for around 3 minutes, before it is served.

Brioche "cupbread" with Varities Filling

My family loves sweet soft bread. Some of our favorite are the water-roux based bread and brioche bread. As a variation and idea for children's lunch box, I made this week brioche "cupcake" bread filled with some children's favorite filling: chicken mushroom, cheese and chocolate sprinkle.


It is basically brioche bread, but I baked it in a cupcake paper and filled it with some of our children's fave fillings. The effect? They found it cute to eat bread cupcake. And since it is small, I could pack a few cupbread into my oldest's lunch box. He found it practical and he could finish all the bread easily. The plus point for me, I just have to defrost a few cupbreads the night before, put it in the microwave (low heat for only 40 seconds), and pack the cupbreads in his lunch box. Fast in the morning, although I have to prepare them before (2 days before). However, despites the 2-days preparation time, I could prepare at least 30 cupbreads in advance. More than enough for a week supply.


It is better to warm the bread in the oven (also low heat), but for practicality in the midst of morning chaos time, I prefer to warm the bread using microwave. And luckily, my critics are happy enough with that. Aside for the success, I feel that my freezer does not have enough space now for my stocks.

RECIPE IS UPDATED: 29th May 2020

Chicken Mushroom Filling
Chicken fillet (chopped)
Champignon mushroom (cut)
Garlic (I used 4 cloves garlic, pressed)
1-2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sweet soy sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste


Heat the oil, and the brown the garlic. Add the chicken and other ingredients (except mushroom). When the chicken is almost cooked, add the mushroom. Taste and adjust it with salt and pepper. Put aside.


Chocolate Sprinkle Filling
2-3 tbsp butter room temperature
Chocolate sprinkle (I used pure/dark chocolate variant)

Mix the butter and chocolate sprinkle using spoon until they form an almost homogen mass. Put aside.


Cheese Filling
Grated cheese


Cupbread Ingredients
500 grams white bread flour (high gluten flour)
7 grams instant yeast (my local brand yeast, suggests 7 grams for every 500 gr flour)
1 tsp salt
6 eggs (or 5 if you use bigger size eggs)
70 grams sugar
125 ml milk + 1 tbsp creme fraiche
250 grams butter (soft, room temperature)
1 egg, beaten for egg wash

Method
1. Place the flour in the bowl, sugar at one side of bowl, salt at one side of bowl and the instant yeast in the middle. Mix the dry ingredients well, you can immediately use the knead (hook) extension of your mixer.
2. After the dry ingredients well mixed, add the eggs and mix it well.
3. Add the milk and condensed milk and mix again the dough until the milk is good incorporated.
4. Cut the butter in cubes, and add them one by one into the bowl. Knead the dough until the gluten develops well. This is when the dough does not stick anymore to the side of the bowl. It is, however, a bit greasy compared to the dough of normal sandwich loaf, due to the high content of butter and eggs.You should be able to stretch the dough easily, although it will not form a relatively thinner membrane like the dough of sweet bread with water roux method. But it should be similar to that.
5. Remove the dough to a plastic bowl and cover it with cling film (plastic wrap). If you cannot bake it at the same day, store it in the refrigerator overnight, or around 24 hours to let it proof. If you can immediately bake it, you can let it proof at room temperature. By then, the volume of the dough should be at least twice.
6. After the dough rise double in size, punch down the dough and divide into several pieces, around 30-40 grams each. Flat the dough using roll pin and put the filling in the middle of the dough. Cover the filling with the dough and pinch the edges and press it to make sure that the filling will not leak out. Put each bread in a cupcake paper (I used cupcake pan to hold the cupcake paper).
 7. Let the dough to raise again for around 2-3 hours, outside the refrigerator, at room temperature. Brush the top of the bread with the beaten egg.
8. Heat the oven, 180Celcius. I baked 2x 12 cupcake pans (plus extra 6 more cupbreads) and used both lower and upper heat. I exchanged the position halfway through the baking time. Bake the bread for around 30 minute or until the skewer inserted into the bread comes clean. Let the bread cool on the rack before serving it.


My oldest son loves the cupbread so much, especially the chicken mushroom filling. He even gave a couple to one of his best friends, who claimed that he loved the cupbread with chocolate sprinkle filling. And my youngest? He simply ate the filling only and pushed away the bread.