#eidmubarak koekjes!!

For muslims all over the world, yesterday was a big festival, a holy day. It was the first day of Syawal month and we have Eid festival. In Indonesia, we usually have specialty food and cookies that only available on this very day. The common (and most favourite) cookies are namely kaastengels and nastar.

If you find the name a little bit Dutch, you get it right. Kaastengels cookies derived from Dutch cheese cookies. Kaas means cheese, and tengel means bar. The original Dutch kaastengel is actually different from Indonesian classic kaastengel because it uses different dough, but anyway we will talk about Indonesian classic cookies here. Nastar stands for "nanas taartjes" or taartjes/cookies with pineapple jam filling. This is also a typical classic Indonesian Eid cookies.

In Indonesia, there are soooo maaannny cookies vendor selling these kind of cookies on Eid. Here in Leuven, of course you won't have any. Not a single one. So i decided to make them myself, only to find that cheese that was used in the recipe wouldn't work like in Indonesia i didn't know why.

A classis Indonesian kaastengels recipe used old semi-hard cheese like edam and cheddar to produce crispy and crunchy baked cheese on the outer top of the cookies. I used the same cheese but all gone melted. Then i turned into kaaskoekjes recipe, known as one of Belgian authentic cookies.

Here goes the recipe.
KAASKOEKJES
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, cold and cut in small cubes
1/2 cup old cheese
1 egg yolk

Combine all the ingredients in one bowl and use your hand to knead the dough until well mixed. Roll the dough using rolling pin (i used a mason jar, well..) until 1/2 inch or 2 cm thick then cut into your desired shape. Bake in 190 degree celcius oven for 15 minutes until it turns golden brown.

NASTAR (PINEAPPLE COOKIES)
2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp grated cheese
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla powder
another 1 egg yolk for coating

for pineapple jam:
500 gr pineapple, processed in a food chopper
100 gr (1/2 cup) granulated sugar

Boil pineapple and sugar in 150 ml water, stir until it thickens and a little bit dry. Approximately an hour. You have to make the jam solid enough to shape it like a candy ball. Be careful to not make it burnt. Loose jam would make it difficult to place inside the cookie dough. Place in a jar and let it cool.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside. In a separate bowl, mix butter and sugar until the butter turned white. I did not use mixer, only a wooden spatula. Please spare your hand force ;) Add egg, mix together using an egg whisk. After it's well mixed, pour dry ingredients into the batter and fold evenly. Roll the dough using rolling pin until 1/2 inch or 2 cm thick then cut into circle. Fill with pineapple jam, fold or roll to cover the jam. Coat with egg yolk. Bake in 160 degree Celcius oven about 35 minutes until it turns golden brown.

Smakelijk!