My Boyfriend's B-day and Checkered Cookies

Last week was my boyfriend's birthday, he's 22 now.
My cooking adventure started when I realized I didn't have any spare money to buy him a present and then I thought, hey it doesn't have to be expensive in order for it to be a great present.
So I went and searched for my all-times butter cookies recipe. I had been surfing on the net and found a quite easy way to make them look great. Be warned, the next recipe make a large batch of cookies, the original was only half of what I use, but I love cookies so I always double proportions.

The close-up. :3

Ingredients are:
200 gr. butter
100 gr. sugar
300 gr. flour
1 tsp. vanilla essence
25gr. cocoa

Mix the sugar and butter until you have an even mixture, leave the butter ouside the fridge for some hours before. Then add the previously sifted flour and vanilla essence to the mixture and mix.
Now comes the fun part, separate the dough in two and mix one with the cocoa. Flaten each dough until they're 3/4 inch (1.5 cm.) thick and cut square straps, put them toghether and use egg whites as glue, these will make checkered cookies. Wrap them in plastic foil and place them at the fridge for at least 20 minutes, pre-heat the oven to 180 Cº and after the dough is cold, cut them in 1/2 inch (1 cm.) thick slices. These will double their size with the cooking so be sure to leave a fair amount of distance between them.

There was another tray full of these in the oven when I took the picture.

To make the rolled dought flatten both doughs and place the smaller one into the larger, to make the spot in the middle use a long cilinder of chocolate dough and start rolling.
To make cinnamon roll cookies flatten the dought and sprinkle cinnamon all over it, then roll.
All doughs shal be placed into the fridge before cutting.
Leave cookies in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
...Enjoy.

I had to put them in a platic bag as the recipient I used was a gift cardboard bag, in the end some broke during the journey. My boyfriend loved them anyway. <3

Aki Matsuri

So this is it! The so much expected aki matsuri had come.
As we live in Mexico the festival is held on the mexican-japanese asociation and is like some sort of kermesse. There are booths where you can play and maybe win a price, food sellers, a stage and also a karaoke.
Needless to say, I went there with the single and purposeful intention of having a go at the food. As we have the Mikasa I can always taste some nice food but at the Aki Matsuri you can have some other things that are more difficult to find on a daily base, or at least ready to be eaten.

Here are the culprits of my current guilt. =P

One of those things were the odango. You know, those cute rice balls that are covered with different dressings. Mine were three, two of them had a shiromiso dressing that tasted salty yet sweet and was really good, I'm not sure of the dressing name so I think I'll have to go and make some research. The last one was of course a sweet anko covered dango. This anko was not entirely crushed and so you could bite some of the beans which was good. Thinking on how soft and deliciously sticky the odango are. I had them with some o-cha, though I'm pretty sure it was actually houji-cha and it was all good. The day was pretty cloudy and cold but everyone was having a lot of fun.
My daughter bought a bun filled with anko for herself and I got myself a daifuku, wich is currently in the fridge, because I had a lot of dangos and I'm afraid of gaining a lot of extra weight. =P

The close up. X3

We also got ourselves some candies and I already tasted the lichee one, it tastes great actually, it's a fresh flavor and the sweetnes is ok. I was afraid of it because Kasugai tends to put a lot of sugar... but it depends on the sweet I guess.

A sample of the bunch we bought.