South Korea (Culinary) Trip in November 2012: Tous Les Jours in Seoul

Our hotel was in Mapo-Gu area, near Susaek station, so it was considerably in peri-urban of Seoul. It looked like office district, so at night it was very quiet only  few peoples seen walking around or maybe because it was cold and no one crazy enough to walk in the middle of the night.

After we had eaten the ginseng chicken soup, it restored our energy, so we decided to walk around the area. We're planning to walk to World Cup Stadium, which was quite far. The weather was cold, and it was windy, so we never got to the Stadium, but we found this little bakery shop near the office area, Tous Les Jours. Well, at that time (almost a year ago) this bakery hadn't opened their branch in Indonesia yet. So, we decided to take a peak there. According to Wikipedia, Tous Les Jours was established in 1996, with the first store opening in Gu-Ri, South Korea in September 1997. The company established a frozen dough facility in Um-Sung, South Korea in November 1997, starting mass production and distribution. In September 1998, the Tous Les Jours company began franchise licensing to the public.

Inside of the bakery shop, it was such eye candy, the breads looked good, and the cakes looked cute. So, even though we were full, we couldn't help ourself  not to buy their breads, but it quite expensive comparing to BreadTalk. We bought three breads and one melon ice candy. Although it was cold, we managed to buy ice sticks, oh okay...but we took it to the hotel.

So, couple  months ago, we went to Central Park and found this Tous Les Jours but surprisingly the selections of breads, not as many as the one in South Korea and many items already sold out. The bread like how it looked, they tasted good, fluffy and not too sweet. I still wish they would open their branch in Bandung.

So, enjoy!

Tous Les Jours
Mapo-gu, Seoul
South Korea

Selection of Breads

Varieties of Sandwiches & Beverages

They wrote down how much calories in the bread

Cute packagings :)

The Cashier

Another selection of breads

What a Cute Cakes

The cakes

One of the cake

Cute candles...Ok everything cute in here

Decoration Kit

Hmm...candies

We scream....Ice cream...

Hmmm...seems good, but it was cold out there

The bagel

The breads that we bought

The facade of the shop

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First Love Patisserie at Gandaria City

Really cute name for a cake stall, and it really IS a cute stall. With bold black and white color selection, it is hardly to be missed.
Their specialty is layer cake. A carefully 20-something layers of thin cakes being build using flavored spreading until it can become a full regular cake. With this kind of effort, now wonder it cost quite heavy, around Rp 25.000 (around U$ 2,6) per slice.
Well, like people always says, you cannot put a price tag to an art, and it is a piece of art in my eyes.
For the flavor, it kinda remind me of cakes make by Japanese cake shop. Very light and yet full of flavor.

Really cannot wait to have this food in Bandung soon (hopefully with more affordable price ^_^).

Enjoy!

First Love Patisserie
UG Floor - Mainstreet Dining
Gandaria City
Jakarta

Thousand Layer Cake

The Cake Stall

The Display

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Baking at Home: Fruit Pie (Crumble)

Inspired by Michael Smith, in one of his "Chef at Home" episode, we decided to try and cook his super simple fruit pie (his version is apple pie) with a little adjustment.
First we used additional margarine, not wholly butter, as we still got quite a lot of it left when Alia was cooking her famous Kaastengel. The second one is that we used not just apple, but various fruits mixture.

Enjoy!

Our Homemade Fruit Pie (Inspired by Michael Smith's Chef at Home)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 stick of margarine (give or take)
1 1/2 cup of baking flour
1 egg
Fruits of your choice (Apple, Kiwi, Strawberry, etc.)

How to make:
Combine sugar, butter, and margarine, and whisk them together using electric mixer.
After combined, gradually add the flour and egg.
Kneed all of the mixture into a solid dough, wrap them using plastic and refrigerate (from 15 minutes to whole day).
Kneed the dough up to the appropriate size, place them upon the baking tray.
Place the fruits over the dough, and bake them on the oven at 175 degrees Fahrenheit until the dough turned golden brown and the fruits soften.
Serves them using Ice Cream or Whipped Cream.
Enjoy!

Fruit Pie (Crumble) #1

The Dough

Fruit inserted into the dough

Mid-Baked Pie

Fruit Pie (Crumble) #2

Fruit Pie (Crumble) #3

Half of it :)

It will much better if combine with ice cream 

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Baking at Home: Kaastengel

We are rarely doing baking in our house, mostly because of the lack of time to do that and also because the equipment in our house is not quite good. But, as we see the abundant cheese brought back from our parents last trip to Holland, we decided to make the most of it. Alia comes up with the idea of creating Kaastengel, a Holland cheese cookies which are very famous for this time of Iedul Fitri in our country.

Here's the ingredients and the process on how to make it.

Enjoy!

Kaastengel (Holland cheese cookies)

Ingredients:
150gr butter
50gr margarine
1 egg yolk + 1 egg yolk for spreading
200gr baking flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
125gr aged Edam cheese (I think we put more than 125gr :D) - Shredded

How to make it:
Sieve the flour, and mix them together with baking powder and salt
Meanwhile prepare the wet batter. Whisk butter and margarine with mixer (medium speed) until it softens up (around 3 minutes, not less). Put it the egg yolk, mix them together until it expands (around 2 minutes or so).
Mix the wet and the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and salt) and the shredded Edam cheese (save some for topping when baking), and whisk together. After that use your hand to kneed the batter, wrap it with plastic and put it into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
While waiting, spread margarine thinly into the baking pan.
After refrigerated, kneed the batter into the shape that you like (we prefer the classic cylindrical shape with 3 cm long). Put them all over the pan and spread them with mixture of egg yolk and water. Put the leftover Edam cheese as topping on each of the dough.
Bake them on the oven at 150 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes until golden brown (don't forget to check them every 5 minutes or so). After finished baking, make sure you wait for additional 5 minutes before moving them into a jar.
Enjoy!

The Cheese

Dough being shaped into Kaastengel

The Cheese from Holland

Yolk to be spread at the top of the dough

Ready to bake

Voila! 15 minutes later

Good foods indeed come from ingredients!

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