Rosette Cookies Indonesian Style (glutenfree)

Aren’t they cool ?! These are rosette cookies, or waffle cookies, or in Indonesian: Kembang Goyang. Which means something like ‘swing flower’. To make these gluten-free cookies (Asian style), you must shake the dough off that is on a waffle iron in a pan with hot oil. The cookies are therefore fried.

Norwegian or Swedish?

After a short online research, I see that these rosette cookies are made a lot in the North of Europe. On Pinterest they are known as: Scandinavian Christmas cookies.

My mother-in-law is Norwegian and she recognized them, but she does not really remember them as Christmas cookies when she was young (while her mother always baked 10+ different kinds of cookies for Christmas; a huge tradition in Norway). She thinks there are used more in Sweden.

But she grabbed her Norwegian old cookbook and they are under ‘Julekaker’ (Christmas cookies). The recipe is slightly different with regular flour and milk.

I know these cookies from my Indonesian cookbooks; made with rice flour and coconut milk. They are therefore even crunchier and lighter and are completely gluten-free.

Rosette Cookies – Kembang Goyang

This recipe is enough for at least 30 cookies and is ready in about 45 minutes.

Ingredients

• 100 grams of rice flour
• 150 ml of coconut milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• Oil for frying (I use sunflower oil)

Necessities

Rosette waffle irons especially made for these cookies.

Rosette cookies batter

1. Beat the egg
2. Add the icing sugar, vanilla sugar and the salt and stir well
3. Pour in all the coconut milk
4. Now stir in the rice flour bit by bit through the batter

The batter is a piece of cake. Especially because rice flour does not really form lumps. Loulou helps me today. She has already chosen a beautiful shape.

My mother had found a large quantity of these irons at the second hand store and immediately bought them for me.

Loulou mixes the ingredients into a thin batter. That is just right.

Meanwhile, we warm up the oil with the irons in it. The irons should heat well for at least 15 minutes.

I do not use a thermometer, but that is useful for this recipe. For perfect cookies, your oil must be between 180 and 185 degrees Celsius, I read online.

I’m going to try it without a thermometer. There will be a few failures. Then we have something to snack on in the meanwhile!

Let’s start.  When the iron is heated I first press it on a kitchen towel, so the excess oil will be removed. Then I push it into the batter, as far as the picture shows. If you push it too far, then the cookie does not come off the iron.

Then I hold the iron in the oil and the cookie starts to bubble beautifully. After 5 counts I shake my iron and the cookie is released.

I let it simmer for three more seconds and then I take it out with tongs and put on kitchen paper to get rid of the excess oil.

In the pan my kembang goyang is still soft, but after 3 seconds cooling on the kitchen towel, it turns out super crispy!

Irons in oil

I leave the irons submerged the oil so that they stay hot. But if the irons get too hot, the batter does not stick properly to the shape; it slips off.

What I do is to keep the irons 10 counts out of the oil before I dip it again. In this way, the heat is just right (but a special thermometer for oil might be useful for these cookies).

We are surprised that you can make many rosette cookies (over 30) from this small amount of batter.

Green pandan

We have, of course, experimented with pandan extract. This palm leaf extract is widely used for desserts in Indonesia. It gives batter a lovely green color and flavor.

We have added half a teaspoon to the batter. Some kembang goyang we’ve dipped half in pandan batter and the other half in regular batter, for an extra interesting effect! ;-).

Want to see more sweet Indonesian recipes? Check out this link.