Commence the post-Christmas posting blitz.

It was also the season to make some holiday cookies. Wanting to continue what I started last year, a week ago, I decided to put together some cookie boxes, mainly to show my appreciation for different friends or leaders in my life.

The first item that has been on my radar to make was kaya jam. By far, one of the best things I had in Indonesia, kaya jam or srikaya is a Singaporean/Indonesian coconut jam, made from coconut cream, eggs, and sugar. A typical breakfast would be to spread a thick layer of this stuff on toast and eat it as so, or eat it with soft boiled eggs. Maybe with some strong coffee flavored with some condensed milk on the side.

Or if you are a degenerate like me, you would eat it straight from the jar and still be satisfied with your life choices.

My mom told me a memories she had of a childhood maid who would make it and an aunt whose kaya jam was known to be legendary. She would tell me that making this jam would often be labor-intensive—stirring the coconut milk and eggs frequently in a double boiler so the eggs wouldn’t be scrambled. This process could take an hour, waiting for the mixture to thicken into jam.

I really didn’t want to spend that much time making this and luckily, found a recipe to circumvent that, and even went further to incorporate this into Linzer cookies.

Making The Jam

Luckily, the process for this seemed pretty straightforward and seemed similar to making custard–in the way where one would isolate the egg yolks and pour some hot milk mixture to temper it before adding everything back into the pot for cooking. One key difference was that I did not have to whisk the egg yolks with the sugar first and instead added the sugar to the coconut milk mixture first.

Speaking of sugar, I finally found a good use for the palm sugar (gula jawa) that my mom got me. This thing was rock hard.

I’m not sure what the proper way of handling this type of sugar was but I shaved off the amount I needed by hacking at it with a knife, which seemed to do the job.

Anyway, after tempering the egg yolks and adding that back into the coconut milk mixture, it was time to start stirring. In about ten minutes, the jam slowly started to thicken to the point where it looked like a spreadable consistency. It was lumpy in some parts but overall, it looked pretty great.

It tasted great. It was a tad sweet but I liked the mellow notes of coconut and pandan. I usually don’t care for pandan as much but I appreciate how well it went together with the coconut. I appreciate its mild flavor and how un-cloyingly sweet it was. Spreading this on a nutty or earthy piece of whole wheat toast meshed really well!

I would definitely be making this again.

Making the Linzer Cookies

I knew going into the cookie box that I wanted to make something with the kaya jam–gotta spice up the regular cookie options. Sandwich cookies seemed to be the way to go. It also gave me an opportunity to buy linzer cookie cutters because why not?

Putting the shortbread dough for this reminded me of the pate sucree dough that I usually make when forming things like fruit tarts, where it involved combining butter, egg yolk, flour, and almond flour. The dough was a little dry and crumbly. I ended up manhandling the dough to make it more cohesive before packing it into a disc and chilling it overnight.

I then cut the dough in half and rolled one half out to 1/8″ thickness and began the process of cutting out circles representing the bottom halves. These cookies went straight into the freezer to chill. After, I took the scraps and rolled them up into a mini disc to chill while I took out the other half of dough and made the top halves with a star cut-out. Likewise, I put these halves in the freezer to chill as well. I suspect that this chilling process was to help the cookie keep their shape and not spread. It was cute and fun, putting the cookie cutter I got to good use.

It was a bit of a tedious process and made me realize that it has been a long while since I last made a dessert—actually, it has been a few months.

There was definitely a nostalgic feeling when I was rolling out the dough. I realized how much I missed working with my hands like this.

I was able to get a good yield out of the dough–around 18 cookies when I recycled the scraps of dough. I noticed that the makeshift dough scrap ball contained a lot more cracks in the dough when I rolled it out, which I suspect to be due to the extra flour content I added when rolling out the dough. I realized at a certain point that unless I added more liquid, the dough would continue to crumble. I decided to stop there and figure I had enough cookies at that point.

These cookies took around nine minutes to bake at 350F. I also realize that this was a great way to look for hot spots in the oven, as evident by the gradient of how well-baked these cookies were. Clearly, the deeper inside the oven, the hotter it was.

I wait for about ten minutes for them to cool completely before assembling the cookies together. I put about a teaspoon of kaya jam on the bottom half of a cookie, spreading it with a butter knife, before pressing a top half firmly on top. I realized very quickly that the thickness of the cookie eclipsed the thickness of the layer of jam I added. I could afford to be more generous with the filling and increased the filling amount by 25%.

In hindsight, I should have dusted the tops with powdered sugar before assembly but oh well. It still looked pretty good.

Overall, the shortbread paired well with the kaya jam and made for a gentle-tasting cookie. I liked that there wasn’t a funky aftertaste that I usually encounter with cookies. I would maybe add a bit more lime zest to bring more of a tangy flavor to the cookie.

Out of the cookies that I’ve made this year, I would consider this to be my favorite. I just personally really like its mild flavors, the coconut, and the hints of pandan. It reminds me of Indonesia and a certain sense of fondness and pride I have for this country.

I would make these again. If not, definitely the jam again.

Srikaya manis dan enak sekali!