2015 Chinese New Year Cookies 杏仁片脆饼

羊年吉祥！

Today is the 13th day of Chinese New Year ( CNY), I hope I am still not too late to wish all my Chinese readers and friends a very happy and prosperous Chinese New Year “ Gong Xi Fa Cai”. As this year is the year of “Goat”, I wish all of you everything very “goat” ( good! )

In the beginning of the year, I had many plans in attempting to make different types of Chinese New Year cookies as New Year gifts to friends and relatives. However, due to recent hectic work schedules all those plans ended down the drain.

However, since I started this blog, it has been customary for me to introduce at least a Chinese New Year dish or bakery to cheer up the new year atmosphere.

Following are the 3 types of common snack food serve during CNY, I managed to make out from my tight schedules.

Almond flakes crisps 杏仁片脆饼, sesame crisps 芝麻脆饼 and crispy filament crab sticks that I made in the very last weekend before rushing back to celebrate CNY with my family in Penang. Due to the time constraint, I didn’t manage to make them in large quantity but only 4 small containers for my sister-in-laws and the occasion my high school reunion gathering.

I was glad these finger foods received good comments.

The easiest was the making of crispy filament crab sticks, by just drying up the filament crab sticks under the sun for 1-2 hours and unrolled into strips and deep fried in medium heat oil. Once the oil was heated up and bubbling, the crab meats were added and heat reduced to brown until crispy. No seasoning needed as the crab sticks were already flavoured.

For the Almond and Sesame crisps, these were basically the same cookies, with different spread sprinkled over the top of the cookies. This round I used almond flakes and white sesame seeds. You can opt to use pistachio, sunflower seeds, black sesame too.

Just a note to highlight, to make really crispy almond crisps, do make sure to spread the batter thinly. Also must make sure you use parchment paper or silicon or fiberglass baking sheet for ease of removal of crisps once it comes out from oven or else you will have difficulty removing the cookies from the baking paper.

Initially, I had a failed attempt when I used normal baking paper resulting in my first batch of sesame crisps being stuck and cannot be removed from the baking paper. I had to carefully remove the crisps with a small knife by scraping them off one by one from the baking paper. At the end many crisps were cracked in the process.

For the second batch I bought a fiberglass baking sheet and I was relieved to be able to remove all the crisps nicely in one piece.

Believe it or not, these egg whites crisps are unbelievable additive, just one bite and I think you'll agree!

 

Almond Flakes Crisp   Ingredients: 4 egg whites ( about 140g) 110g icing sugar 80g low protein flour (cookie flour) 100g Almond flakes 60g butter (melted)   Method Preheat oven at 160 degree Celsius for 15 minutes. Beat egg white and icing sugar till fluffy and soft peak. Add melted butter and flour use a spatula to gently combine well. Line a baking tray with parchment paper or fiberglass baking sheet. Spoon batter (1tsp) onto the lined tray and use the back of spoon to spread the batter to round thin and even layer. Sprinkle with a little almond flakes or Sesame or chopped pistachio. Bake at pre-heated oven at 160C for 12-15mins or until all evenly golden brown. Remove the crisps from the tray once out of the oven while still hot. Store in air-tight container once cool.   杏仁片脆饼   材料: 烤盤布 (鋪底用.烤好易脫餅且不沾黏又能重複使用) 牛油60g 4粒蛋白 (約140g) 糖 粉 110g 低筋麵粉80g 杏仁片 100g   作法: 1.      烤箱設定160度預熱15分鐘。 2.      蛋白加入糖粉，拌打至發，加入融化的牛油和過篩的低筋麵粉再輕輕拌勻成面糊。 3.      烤盤鋪一張烤盤布或不沾纸，盛一小湯匙面糊在烤盤布上再用湯匙將其鋪平均愈薄愈好。 4.      撒上少许杏仁片或芝麻 或开心果片。 5.      放入預熱烤箱，以160度烤12-15分钟至呈金黃色即可出爐。 6.      一定要趁熱將脆饼移放在烤架上待涼。 7.      冷卻後記得裝入密封罐內存储

CHEESE & MILK COOKIES 芝士牛奶方块酥

Heat it up again!

I just realized since CNY I have not been updating this site! Which also means, I have not been active in kitchen for so many months?

Well, I have to admit that, I am guilty as charged. Frankly, for the past months other than focusing on work, much of my free time was spent on running, gardening and at some point I was rushing sewing projects to prepare wedding gifts and baby gifts to my colleagues.   I will share the photos of these sewing projects in later posts.

Besides, I must confess in the last few months I was kind of addicted to the small screen of a tablet chasing after a few famous Korean dramas. The Korean wave was still on to me, as I just came back from my 8 days DIY trip with 3 lady friends near the end of April 2014. I will try to find time to share some of the highlights of my Korea trip later especially the food we enjoyed there.

Last Sunday morning, after my routine long run and some weeding at my garden, I decided to resume my baking activity by trying out this simple cookies recipe.  I had prepared the ingredient even before my Korea trip and I told myself not to delay anymore and decided to finish them off.

This recipe was extracted from Yum Yum food magazines featuring Chinese New Year cookies, but this cheese cookie can be served anytime of the year.  It is especially great for afternoon tea serving as kids-friendly nutritious snacks!

 

CHEESE & MILK COOKIES 芝士牛奶方块酥

Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies 蔓越莓巧克力曲奇

Last Friday when Ming Ray learnt that my sister from Penang planned to bring her daughter Kyra to spend a weekend with us in KL during the Raya holiday, he anxiously counted down the days looking forward to welcoming his little cousin sister and to show her around. However, we were surprised with the little 6 years old Kyra asking for a baking session with me. Seeing my little niece being so keen to learn baking, of course as her aunt I had no reason to disappoint my adorable niece. J  When Ming Ray knew about this plan, he too eagerly wanted to join his cousin sister in baking.

Kyra asked to make heart shaped cookies.  As teaching 2 kids to bake was undoubtedly a challenging task, I decided to make this simple butter chocolate chip cookies. With kids around, you could expect this wouldn’t be a proper baking session.

Yes, it ended up more like a play dough time to the kids. In between both of them had arguments to take turn to use the mixer and to mould the cookies dough but we were pleased to see both kids enjoyed their baking session anyway.

Heykids, baking or play dough time?

I was so relieved to see the cookies came out from oven still in one piece and in proper shape. Most importantly, Kyra enjoyed her baking time and loved her cookies very much and even gave 2 thumbs up for the taste of the cookies! J

ALMOND BUTTER COOKIES 杏仁牛油饼

There is a saying that baking can be a great bonding activity and I agree fully to it. Last Sunday, I had a fun cookies baking session with my son Ming Ray. He enjoyed his little master chef task assigned by me to cut the dough into assorted shapes that he liked with cookies cutter. Not only he gave a big thumb up to the taste of the cookies he made, the following day he proudly shared the cookies with his buddies at school too. J

This easy cookies recipe was adapted from Baking Made Easy by Agnes Chang (蓝赛珍，轻轻松松学烘焙); it was named Almond Cookies in the book. However I found the cookies were overpowered by the buttery flavor. To me it tasted more like butter cookies than almond cookies. Hence, I am renaming this recipe to Almond Butter Cookies. Having said that, the cookies are tasty to eat, not too sweet and it was really crunchy on the outside but soft from the inside.



ALMOND BUTTER COOKIES  杏仁牛油饼

ROYAL SHORTBREAD COOKIES 奶油酥餅

Cookie dunk?

I had this recipe since last Christmas when I attended my monthly budget eating cooking class, which I already shared in my Christmas High Tea post, but never attempted to make it until now. 

Frankly, I'm not a sweet tooth person, I seldom eat sweet biscuits but love to eat savory cracker dunk with hot chocolate or coffee. However I do sometimes like buttery biscuits, especially round tin Danish butter cookies. When I first tasted shortbread in that high tea, the strong buttery flavor and the texture of the biscuit melted in the mouth gave me very close similarity to Danish cookies except it was not so sweet which was more to my liking.

Finally, when I saw that I still had blocks of butter to clear off and my hand mixer was due to be sold off with less than 3 weeks time to return to home country (we are now gradually selling off our electrical appliances online), I made my first batch of cookies.

The recipe that I shared was the combination of two recipes from my cooking class and the techniques from Joy of Baking. As my boy Ming Ray loved chocolate, this Royal shortbread cookies by Joy of Baking with one end of the baked shortbread dipped with melted chocolate was just right for his taste.

The next day was Ming Ray's swimming sports day and the school invited parents to join the children for picnic lunch. I brought along the cookies to share with his school friends and parents. I was so pleased that my first attempt in cookies making received very good feedbacks.





I love to dunk these cookies in mocha coffee, would you care to have a cuppa with me? J



Royal Shortbread - Shortbread with chocolate dipping



Shortbread cookies featured in Group Recipes - 10/03/2011

ROYAL SHORTBREAD COOKIES INGREDIENTS: 220g butter, room temperature 3/4 cup icing sugar 3/4 cup corn flour 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract For Chocolate Dipped Shortbreads: 180 grams semi sweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped METHOD: Cream butter and icing sugar. I used hand mixer to beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Add sugar and beat until smooth and beat in vanilla extract.  Add sifted flour, corn flour and mix thoroughly with the creamed butter mixture until it forms dough. Flatten the dough into a disk shape, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill the dough for at least an hour or until firm.  Preheat oven to 180 degrees C with the rack in the middle of the oven. Knead dough and then roll out the dough about 10mm thickness on a lightly floured surface.  Cut into shapes as desired using cookie cutter.   Place on prepared baking sheets and place in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. This will firm up the dough for cookies to maintain their shape when baked. Bake for 8 - 10 minutes, or until cookies are very lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack. For Chocolate Dipped Shortbreads: Place finely chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place it over a saucepan of simmering water. Once the chocolate has melted, remove it from the heat.   Taking one cookie at a time, dip one end of each cookie in the melted chocolate and place it on a baking paper lined baking sheet.  Once all the cookies have been dipped in the chocolate, place the baking sheets in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes, or until the chocolate has hardened. Tip：Shortbread cookies that keep in an airtight container can last for about a week or they can be frozen. 奶油酥餅 這個餅乾只用很多酥油而沒有水份，所以做出來的餅乾很酥脆，十分適合當做下午茶的茶點。 材料: 220克牛油，室温 3 / 4杯糖粉 3 / 4杯玉米粉 1½杯面粉(中筋麵粉) 1茶匙纯香草精 蘸巧克力酥饼： 180克半甜巧克力或苦甜巧克力，切碎 作法 1。用搅拌机搅拌牛油和糖粉。先把牛油搅拌，分次加入糖粉打发至膨胀变白才加入香草精。 2。将面粉和玉米粉一起筛过后加入奶油搅拌混合均匀成面团。 3。再把面团压扁成盘形，用保鲜膜包装，放冰箱冷藏1小时以上。 4。先预热烤箱至180摄氏度将中间架烤箱中的。 5。面团取出后稍回温再擀成1公分厚片，以餅乾壓模壓切成形。 6。放置在冰箱的地方约15分钟变硬定型保持其形状。 7。排入垫烤盘纸的烤盘烤8 - 10分钟，或烤至表面呈现浅浅的金黄色取出放在冷却架上冷却。 蘸巧克力酥饼： 將巧克力碎片放進大碗中，然後把碗放進一鍋滾水裡，隔水加熱溶化巧克力碎片，邊加熱邊攪拌，感覺一半的碎片開始溶化即可取出（勿加熱太久），繼續攪拌，碗裡的餘熱會溶化剩下的巧克力，全部溶化之後，繼續攪拌直到巧克力漿滑順且表面發亮。 将饼干一半蘸于溶化的巧克力后放置在烤纸上。一旦所有的饼干蘸了巧克力，放进冰箱约10分钟，或直至巧克力变硬。 温馨提示： 饼干收在一个密封的容器可保持一个星期左右，也可以被冷藏。