Sunday, December 20, 2009

Chocolate Cake with Raspberry

Craving for a chocolate cake, I made one plus adding Raspberry to perfection its taste. The innards cake - melted bittersweet chocolate with raspberry.


I should have been warned with this combination. Now I couldn't stop eating. HELP :D

Thursday, December 17, 2009

My Super Busy September - The Making of Le Gateau Cookies

It was on September, Muslim people celebrating Hari Raya Idul Fitri. Popular things happening on Ramadhan months are Puasa, Taraweh, and also the time for Lebaran cookies. Special Lebaran all time cookies, such as: Nastar, Putri Salju, Kastengel, etc. Unlike other years before, this time I'm gonna do my own cookies for my self consuming, and sell it. What? selling cookies? Yes. I have made my mind that I will have a guts to sell some cookies this Lebaran.

So many delicious all time cookies out there, and I do not want to compete with those. I'm trying to do something different so people could experience other taste than the existing ones. After some trial that I've made, so I came up with 4 flavors that I'm gonna sell.

After deciding those flavor, the next step is to come up with a good packaging. I have fallen in love with a good and nice packaging. Anything that looks good in terms of design, I love it! One day I walked into a really famous cakery in town, I saw they have a really nice packaging for their cookies. Despite on the cookie taste which was mediocre, but I love how they put together between the cookies, label design and packaging. It just looks so beautiful! Based on that reference, so I design my own cookies labels.

First, Look for a packaging.
I already had in mind which kind of packaging that I will use, and it will be only 2 kinds of packaging. Small and Medium. The thing is easy to get the medium size plastic jar, but the small one.. ooh that's the though part! I have to call almost all baking supply store in this town, and not to mentioned went to traditional market to find it. No good. So Plan B, I only sold minimum quantity for the small package. And the good thing is, only few people ordered the small sizes, they tend to order the medium one :)

Second. Sketch the design.
After the packaging, start to sketch design for labels that will fits into the packaging. Came up with ideas how my labels are gonna be. I love using bright colors because the look are so refreshing, so I choose 4 kinds of colors to be on the label also with other colors. The colors represent each of the cookies. I also wanted the labels to look young but yet elegant and simple. Too much things will ruins your design, trust me. So just keep it simple and it will turned out good as always. Okay. Done with the labels now next part...

Third. Do the photography for Cookies.
Because each of my labels will contains photo of the cookies, then I have to make a photo session of it. Using my Digital Camera, these photo session tooks 2 days.. In the middle of my other working deadline (which was quite overloaded at that time) but I could finished it and so happy doing all of these things.

Fourth. Design Labels & Print
Transfer the design into computer, do the layout until I finally satisfied with the whole look. Once I'm happy with it, print out the labels to stick into the packaging.

Fifth. Do the photography for Packaging.
These took a whole day. Again, using only my Digital camera, I'm quite satisfied with the results.

Sixth. Promotion Time!
As this is my first time of selling cookies, I'm aiming to sell these cookies to my friend first. So I do an simple catalogue that could be send through internet. And for the others I also gave them samplers of my cookies in individual package. The good thing when you have a friend working in the office, they'll see the samplers and hopefully will order the cookies too. And it did happen!

Seventh. Selling Time!
Not long after I spread the catalogue, the cookies samplers, emails or phone or text messages came to order the cookies. So now it's time to do the battle of flour (that's what I said) :D

Eight. Delivery.
I'm working with my trustworthy courier to deliver the cookies. Since it's a cookies, it's easier to deliver than a cup cakes. I bought a brown paper bag as the outer packaging and stick on my cookies logo on the paper bag. I just love to sell everything in a pretty package. Hoping that people will be happy when they received the package. And yes, they were happy :D


Here are the range of cookies that I sold.


Chocolate Chip Cookies

Crunchy Berries

Orange Poppy Seed


Chocolate Mint


I hope this could give you an inspiration to create your own labels and create a different kind of cookies to celebrate Hari Raya Idul Fitri :)