Chinese New Year Special: Almond Cookies!

With today being the first day of the Chinese New Year, I thought I would pay homage to my heritage and bake a cookie that is usually served around this time of the year. Now, I’m not a very traditional Chinese person but every now and then it’s nice to make something Chinese, and today seemed like the best occasion to do so. Almond cookies are very commonly served during dessert in Chinese restaurants, especially around the Chinese New Year. Usually they are a bit dry and not that exciting but I thought that I’d search for a recipe that made tasty and interesting almond cookies.

Mine turned out too crumbly and not as crunchy as I’d hoped, so next time I will tweak the recipe a bit. Perhaps I will process the ground almonds so they are finer and play around with the proportions for the ingredients. But they do like quite nice and will satisfy anyone’s cravings for Chinese cookies. Happy New Year everyone!

Here’s what you’re gonna need:

Chinese Almond Cookies (adapted from Bread et Butter):

• 100 g ground almonds
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cups caster sugar
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• a pinch of salt
• ~100 mL canola oil (or other flavourless oil, e.g. corn)
• 30-40 whole blanched almonds (depends how many cookies you make)
• 1 egg yolk, beaten

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt into the bowl of your stand-mixer (you can do all of the mixing by hand if you don’t have a mixer). Add the ground almonds.

3. With your mixer on medium speed (with the paddle attachment), drizzle the oil into the flour/sugar/almond mixture until the dough just begins to come together (you may need more or less). You should be able to form the dough into a ball and it shouldn’t fall apart.

4. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Form the dough into ~1 inch balls. Press the balls down a bit to flatten them out a bit and place them on the baking sheet (no need to worry about spreading). The recipe should make about 30-40 cookies.

5. Press an almond into the top of each cookie.

6. Lightly brush the tops of the cookies with the egg yolk.

7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the tops are fairly golden and the sides of the cookies are slightly golden.

8. Remove from the oven and cool the cookies on a wire rack. Enjoy!