With 2 peanut lovers in the house, this has always been a must have in our Chinese New Year cookies making list. And it will usually be the first to finish, even way before the Pineapple tarts. This cookie traditionally uses Ghee but unfortunately my elder twin does not like the smell of ghee, so I have to switch to butter instead.
Thanks to a nice lady, Phua Hui Yin who's willing to share her beautifully taken picture, She'd tried the recipe and done it more perfectly then I could manage. Check out Hui Yin's FB page for more of her wonderful creations, in particular her Bento meals.
Ingredients
300g Plain Flour
150g Cake Flour
1 tsp Baking powder
250g Chilled unsalted butter (cubed)
2 Egg yolks
1 tsp Vanilla essence
Few drops Green food coloring
¼ tsp Salt
1 tbsp Full cream milk powder
1 tsp Emplex (Can be omitted if you do not want preservative to be included in your bakes)
4 ~ 6 tbsp Cold water
Fillings:
200g Chopped roasted peanuts
80g Castor sugar
2 tbsp Shortening
Directions
- Sift flour, baking powder, emplex and full cream milk powder together. Add salt and sugar.
- Cut butter into cubes and rub into the flour
- Mix egg yolk, vanilla, green food coloring and water together. Beat well.
- Gradually pour the egg solution into the flour mixture and mix well into soft dough.
- Leave in refrigerator for 30 mins before use.
- Wrap 10g of dough with ½ tsp mixed fillings and shape into a leaf-shape, pinch with a saw edge clipper to get the leaf veins
- Bake at 150 °C for 30 mins. Cool completely before dusting with icing sugar.
** Emplex is an emulsifier to increase the strength of the dough. It keeps the cookies crispy and last longer.
This is what I used for pinching the leaf veins, this is also used to pinch the top of the Petal shaped Kueh Bangkit