Simple Eats – CNY Almond Cookies

Chinese New Year 2011 Baking Part 4

After a week-long hiatus, I’m back to continue with more Chinese New Year baking with almond cookies with a melt-in-your-mouth texture.

I used Jess’ recipe from J3ss Kitch3n’s recipe after reading very good reviews about them on Min’s blog but doubled the amount and made some modifications along the way.

Here’s Jess’ recipe

Ingredients (makes approximately 50 cookies)

150g self raising flour
80g icing sugar (reduced to 60g)
80g ground almond
80g diced almonds
100g corn oil
1/2 tsp almond essence (optional)
Egg yolk for brushing

Instructions

1. Sift together flour and icing sugar, add in ground almond and diced almonds, mix well.
2. Mix almond essence into corn oil and stir well.
3. Mix both ingredients together to form a soft dough. (the dough will come together when you roll them so don’t worry about it being crumbly)
4. Shape into small round balls and place into small paper casing and press it slightly.
5. Brush with egg yolk and decorate with toppings of your choice and bake in a preheated oven at 170°C for 15-20mins or until slightly brown.
6. Cool completely on wire rack before storing into airtight containers.

I used entirely ground almond and omitted diced almonds altogether. I further reduced the sugar used to 100g for 300g of flour, following Sze Min’s suggestions but it still tasted quite sweet. I only had 250g of self-raising flour and topped up the rest with plain flour and a small teaspoon of baking powder. The texture is really crumbly and “melt-in-the-mouth”. The almond essence is a bit overpowering though. Can consider omitting it completely like what Min did.

Just to attest how crumbly and melt-in-the-mouth this is. Thanks Jess for sharing this wonderful recipe and hosting this month’s Aspiring Bakers #3!

I’m submitting this for Aspiring Bakers #3: My Favorite CNY Cookie (Jan 2011) generously hosted by Jess from J3ss Kitch3n.

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