Ching's Tutti-Frutti Cookies

Long ago back in 2006, I tried Pusiva's Tutti-Frutti cookie recipe, you can see the post here.   It was similar to Icebox cookie as it was shaped, refrigerate until firm, thinly sliced and then baked.  Her version included desiccated coconut to create a light and crispy texture.  This time around, I played with my own little version by adding slightly more flour, reduce sugar slightly (I remembered I noted it was too sweet before) and also added the sweeten coconut flakes in addition to desiccated coconut for a fun twist.  I just realized I shouldn't call it tutti-frutti as tutti-frutti means candied peels and I used none of it in this recipe.  Oops!

This cookie is light and crispy with coconut fragrant and totally irresistible.  Try it!  I gave some to my friends on X'mas, I hope they like it. 

I also want to take this opportunity to wish my readers a Happy New Year 2012, may you have a happy and healthy new year! :)

I'm submitting these cookies to  Aspiring Bakers #14: Creative Christmas Bakes (December 2011) hosted by Hankerie. 

Spiced Holiday Cookies

 

 

This spiced holiday cookies is like a gingerbread cookie without the molasses.  I created this recipe because I don't buy molasses.  But yet I wanted to make a ginger based cookies with other spices and thus this was the result.  My girls had been bugging me to make gingerbread man cookies ever since they seen the Christmas lights in my neighborhood.  My youngest almost ask me every day is it Christmas yet?  How many days away is Christmas?  etc.

That's all the motivation I needed as I know my youngest loved to help me decorate the cookies.  She helped decorated more than half of the cookies, it was fun for her and easier for me.  This cookie is crispy with the fragrant of spices.  I hope you like it!

I'm submitting these cookies to  Aspiring Bakers #14: Creative Christmas Bakes (December 2011) hosted by Hankerie.

Healthy Olive Oil Cookies with Sunflower & Sesame Seeds

This is the extension of my healthy cookies attempt.  In 2008, I created a Healthy Cookies which I shared the recipe in 2009.  Today, I make it healthier with extra virgin olive oil and increase the energy of this cookie by adding oats, walnuts, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds (all these are health boosting food).

I grew up from eating cookies as a snack so it will be very hard to ask me to give up on cookies.  Most of the cookies selling at the supermarkets today have trans-fat (partially hydrogenated oil, hydrogenated oil or shortening) listed in their ingredients list.  So, the choices I have were limited unless I pay more for all natural or organic cookies.  Even the cookies selling at Asian markets have trans-fat or shortening, imagine I have to give out the Asian cookies that I grew up eating and loved.  It was heart breaking to take down the cookies that I loved and had to put it back on the shelf when I read the ingredients list.  It happened to me so very often.  I am someone who is very careful about trans-fat because I realized over the years I had been eating trans-fat laden cookies, cakes, donuts, or bakes when I grew up when trans-fat was not listed in the label and people were not aware of it.  But now we know, it is all a choice and it is your choice to decide what you want to put in your body and how you want to raise your kids.  It is hard to avoid trans-fat food all the times but I am trying very hard to. 

So, these days I try to bake cookies and cake as best as I can.  I baked this cookies for my girl's school snack and also my afternoon snack, limit to 2 a day.  As this is a healthy cookies, it's only suitable for those that are eating for their health, love the taste of extra virgin olive oil and whole wheat flour and won't miss the smell of butter in a cookie.  This is not an indulgent cookies that when you sink your teeth in it, you taste butter and extreme sweetness.  This is a crispy cookie that when you bite into it, you would taste olive oil, whole wheat flour and walnut.  This is not a super sweet cookie too.  Of course you can use canola oil for the neutral taste and cheaper alternative, just change the extra virgin olive oil to canola oil.  Seriously, if you are a little health conscious and love to snack on cookies, it's worth a try.  Did I also mention that it's super easy to make and put together?

I am also submitting this recipe to Dr. Oz Healthy Holiday Cookie Challenge.

Happy Halloween!!!

I want to wish my readers a Happy Halloween!!  Have a safe and fun time trick-or-treating!!  And keep the kids warm!

These spider cookies are very easy to make.  All you need are some round shape cookies, thin pretzels, Nutella/ peanut butter (I used Nutella) and mini M&M or raisins for the eyes.   Take one round cookie, spread it with Nutella/ peanut butter as a glue, then top with 8 broken pretzels as legs.  Spread the other half of cookie with more Nutella/ peanut butter, glue it together.  Take one M&M or raisin, dip with some Nutella/ peanut butter and glue it on top of the cookie as eye, finish the other eye.  There you have it!  Evy took this as her afternoon snack at school and she had a fun time eating it.

Custard Cookies

This cookie sure have a strange look.  Evy called it snake skin cookie.  LOL!  This was resulted from my experiment in the kitchen.  I was surprised that the cookie turned out like this too.  If you try this recipe of mine, let me know if yours turn out looking like this too, okay?  Because I am curious!  Look aside, this cookie is crisp and melt in the mouth with the fragrant of custard powder.  Actually tasted very good.  This is the last of my CNY cookies for this year.  收工了!

Early Happy Valentine's Day!! 情人节快乐!!

I was told that the last day of Chinese New Year is also the Chinese Valentine's Day.  So what's better way  to incorporate the Chinese New Year cookies into the Valentine's Day cookies as well.  I made this pineapple tarts using the heart shape cookie cutter and voila ~ a sweet heart shape Valentine's cookie made with love from the heart! 

You can find my recipe here.  I am sure your loved one would love to receive a gift from the heart that made from scratch.  People always say to win a man's heart, you will have to win his tummy first.  These days I am not too sure about this, but perhaps that's still the case if he is looking for a wife that can cook.  :-P

 

I want to wish all the love birds out there a Very Happy and Sweet Valentine's Day!!  情人节快乐!!

I am also submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #4: Love In The Air (Feb 2011) hosted by Cuisine Paradise.

Click next page to see the cookie cutter that I used to make this!

Chinese Cashew Cookies

This year I made Cashew Cookies instead of my usual Peanut Cookies.   I have a can of salted cashews and I thought I would use that to make my cookies.  First, I toasted my cashews until golden brown and then I processed it in my food processor until fine.  After that, I used it to make this cashew cookies.  I decorated the top with a half cashew just to identify it (if not it would look like peanut cookies).  This cookies is the soft and melt in the mouth type.  So, very fragile.  Once you pop into the mouth, it dissolves and melts.

The sweetness is just nice and very easy to make as well.  Through my blog, all beginner can at least make a few delicious CNY cookies on their own.  Such as peanut cookies, cashew cookies, sugi cookies, cornflakes cookies, etc...

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #3 : My Favorite CNY Cookie (Jan 2011) hosted by Jess of i3ss kitch3n.

Chinese Sesame Cookies

I remembered when I was a child, I heart a type of Chinese sesame seeds cookies.  It had been so long that I could hardly recall the texture of this cookies anymore.  I only remembered if I saw it being served, I would certainly had some.  I did a search on the web and found one recipe from About.com and the picture of the sesame seeds cookies resembled the one I remembered.  So, of course I got to give this recipe a try.  But not sure why my cookies turned out looking different (mine had flat top)?  The one thing I changed was used all butter instead of half butter and half shortening.

I wanted contrasting colors so I tried a few with black sesame seeds.  This cookies is delicious, fragrant with the smell of sesame seeds and very crispy.  But not quite like the one I remembered.  Nevertheless, we were all in loved with this cookies, my girls couldn't stop snacking on it.  I don't think this batch can last through Chinese New Year.  The longer it kept, the smell of sesame seeds grew stronger.

If you are looking for a new CNY cookies to bake this year, this can be it.  :-)

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #3 : My Favorite CNY Cookie (Jan 2011) hosted by Jess of i3ss kitch3n.

Butter Cookies & Season Greetings!

 
I wanted to bake some cookies for Christmas, something fun to look at for kids and delicious to eat of course.  I wanted a basic butter cookies and I found the recipe at Joy of Baking website.  Then, I just used my figure cookie cutter and started creating.  I enlisted both my girls to help me to decorate as this was the fun part of making Christmas cookies.  Needless to say, both of them were so happy that they got to help.  Edda did the buttons, Evy did the red sprinkles and I drew the eyes and mouth. :-)

This butter cookies were buttery and crispy when you baked until the edges were brown.  If you take it out too early, the cookies would be soft.   They couldn't wait for the cookies to be cool completely before trying.  Got to say, we all loved it and had fun making it!  We loved the fragrant of the butter!

Hereby wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Safe New Year 2011!!!

Chinese Almond Cookies

I had some leftover almond that I needed to use up, about 1/3 cup of it.  Just nice that we finished the oatmeal cookies that I made for our snack so I wanted to use the almond to make cookies.  A fool proof recipe that I made before and also must be easy.  So I picked this almond sugi cookies recipe that I made dozen of times and added the chopped almond.

I really loved the extra crunch from the chopped almond and this cookie was very yummy.  So suitable for Chinese New Year too. 

Soft Pumpkin Cookies

What can represent Fall season more than pumpkin?  I just want to make something with pumpkin this time of the year.  I saw this pumpkin cookies recipe on joyofbaking Website and decided to give it a try.  The reason was simple because I never make it before.  This cookie is just like what it stated, soft and cake like in texture.  I certainly would prefer a more chewy one or crispy one.  I used sugar instead of brown sugar as stated in the original recipe, I wonder perhaps it might caused my cookies to be none chewy.  I also omitted the cream cheese frosting.  Anyway, my girls loved it nonetheless so I was glad.  Evy will bring this as her school snack.

As for me, I would love to play and experiment with this recipe some more, as I wanted a crispy pumpkin cookies instead of soft and cake like.  It's like eating a tiny piece of cake on the next day.

Rose & Vanilla Spirals Cookies

I was asked for this recipe from a reader last week.  Actually, I made this cookie a while ago back in 2005 and it was out of experimentation.  And I never made it again until today because I had to test out the recipe first.  I made that cookie in 2005 with simply threw more of this here and there and see how it was created.  The original recipe used mint extract and green coloring or strawberry extract and red coloring but I ran out of strawberry extract thus had to use the closes substitute which was rose extract.  Because this rose extract was already red in color thus the coloring was omitted.

This cookie dough was a bit soft at room-temperature thus had to use the scraper to move the dough and helped along with the rolling.  The texture of this cookie is crispy and then sort of melt in the mouth in the end.

The picture of my old post cookies can be found here.  It has the mint version.

Soft Whole Wheat Raisin Oats Cookies 2

I liked my Whole Wheat Oats Cranberries Cookies but it was made with butter.  It was delicious with butter, don't get me wrong, but I wanted to experiment it with oil.  To me, using oil is healthier than using butter.  I made this cookie big, as big as a palm of my hand.  I gave some away to a friend.  The rest we ate it all up.  It was good, seriously, and I don't miss the butter.  Even my hubby who normally don't eat my cookies, ate this, he said he needed the calories. (0.0)  My girls loved it especially Edda, after they tried it, they came and told me they are my number one fans again!  LOL!   How cute!  I guess I need to make them more oats cookies since this is about the only time that we eat oats in our house.

Cool on wire rack.

Okay, this cookie is soft and chewy.  I need to experiment with another recipe of mine because I like my cookies slightly crunchy.

Valentine's Day Cookies

Chinese New Year falls on Valentine's Day this year so we see some of the Chinese New Year cookies this year were made into heart shape.  I didn't plan on making this cookies actually but I was left with some pineapple dough from making the Nastar.  So, I rolled out the dough, cut it with a lovely heart shape cookie press and put the middle with raspberry preserved.  Valentine's Day needs some red color right?  So, raspberry or strawberry preserved was the best choice for me.  Lovely isn't it?

Be careful not to put too much preserved in the middle as it would spilled out during baking.  But it was still okay, just scrape off the spill preserved when cool.  I baked them in preheated 350'F oven for 12 minutes.  I didn't apply egg wash on them because I didn't want to ruin the look of the raspberry preserved.

Here wishing all my readers a Sweet and Happy Valentine's Day and a Prosperous and Healthy Lunar New Year!!! 

Pineapple Tarts 2010

These pineapple rolls were also called nastar.  This was the first time I made a successful nastar actually because previously I just couldn't roll the pastry out from the nastar molds that I bought.  It was so hard that I just gave up.  When I went back to Malaysia in 2008, I saw another plastic nastar mold with a push stick to push the dough out, I quickly grabbed one.  And it worked!  It made my life so much easier with this new tool.

I spent the whole afternoon and only managed to produce 59 nastars, like shown above!  Like I said before, this was one cookie that took time to make and could be finished in on time.  My pineapple pastry and short-cut jam recipes can be found here. 

This pastry is soft and melt-in-the-mouth type. Some were not as pretty because after a while I just wouldn't be bother anymore.  :P  Great thing is it is just for home consumption.

Below is the picture of the mold I used to make this pineapple rolls.

Kuih Bangkit 2010

My kuih bangkit for 2010.  Same old recipe but using a new cookie cutter.  Too lazy to pinch pattern also.  I wonder how people got energy to make tons to sell?

Recipe can be found here.

Step by step pictures guide here.

Cornflakes Cookies without Flour Take 2

With the advice from youfei, I used honey instead of sugar to help it bind.  I added dried cranberries and walnuts to make it healthier but this is not a healthy cookies because it is packed with butter.  The butter made it really fragrant and when baked, it was really crispy.  This recipe is for those who seeks it, enjoy!  The sweetness is just nice, not overly sweet.

You can add any dried fruits, roasted nuts, chips for baking or anything you can think of  to make it uniquely yours.  Now I know what to make to bring it for Evy's classmates, the chocolate version would be ideal for little kids.  Without nuts, just raisin and cornflakes so all kids can enjoy it.  ^o^

Chocolate Covered Cornflakes Cookies

From the boo boo of my previous post, I created this Chocolate Covered Cornflakes Cookies.   This is a yummy cookie.  Almost like my chocolate clusters yet a bit different.  Since some of the cornflakes cookies that I made early won't stick together, I have resorted to use chocolate to bind them together.  I couldn't waste a bowl of fragrant buttery and crispy cornflakes mix.  Chocolate is excellent especially in this cold weather (super cold winter here), I don't even have to store it in the refrigerator.

Closer view of the cookies.

My two trays of cornflake cookies, now finished, all in our tummies. :P

Ok,  back to the draft on this cornflake cookies, if I failed again, more chocolate one will be created.  Even though the chocolate ones are delicious, but this plain one has it own place in our hearts, even my girls who love chocolate wanted to eat this too, Evy said both were good.  To me, this is more suitable for warm weather as chocolate will melt if it's warm. 

Cornflakes Cookies without Flour

If you are my avid reader or someone who have tried my Chinese New Year cookie recipes, you should know I have been making cornflakes cookies for years. The one that uses flour and oil/butter. This year I wanted to try something different. Cornflakes cookies without flour and I am still experimenting with the recipe. Let me perfect it first before I share it with you because I am having problem for some to stick together. I ended out creating another version of this cookies, the chocolate covered cornflakes cookies which is equally delicious if not more.



Sharing pictures of this delicious treat for now. Recipe will be share once I perfected it. First, I need to go buy more cornflakes cereal.

Green Curry Paste Cookies

I had been thinking...whether to create new Chinese New Year cookie recipes for 2010. I came across Laksa Cookies last year but never tried it. 1) Living aboard good laksa paste was hard to come by. 2) I am too lazy to make my own paste (too much extra work just to make a cookie). And then it kind of strike me that I knew a good Thai green curry paste and in fact I had it at home. So, why not make a Green Curry Paste Cookie instead of the Laksa cookie for us who live overseas? Hence, this cookie was inspired by Laksa cookies and I was eager to try it out. So, sharing with you my tried and tested Green Curry Paste Cookies. This cookie is crunchy and very spicy! Definitely for adult who likes it spicy. And of course tasted like Thai green curry!