Cherry Blossom Stained Glass Cookies (樱花玻璃曲奇）

INTRODUCTION

Stained glass cookie is a rather trendy bake in Asia in recent years ..The cookie is also named as “Cathedral or church window “ cookies. It  is a cookie that have a candy in the centre resembling the tinted glass windows in some old European buildings.

Many people have baked this as last year’s Christmas cookies…. However, I have decided to push back this recipe to Chinese New Year as I believed it is a perfect cookie for this auspicious Chinese festival.

I purposely choose one design that shaped like flowers.. Since it is spring festival, flowers will blossom signifying a new year has arrived. After consultation with members of some Facebook Groups, I have decided to name this as Cherry blossom cookies since I already have a plum blossom cookies recipe.

Unlike other recipes in the net, this recipe is very simple.. no difficult ingredients and what you need are just 4 main ingredients: flour, sugar, butter and some hard candy. No complicated and specialized mould is required. I use my pineapple tarts mould and do an additional step of cutting of the centre. It was pretty easy actually.

For the hard candy, it can be of any type, any brand, and any colour. For purpose of Chinese New Year, I am quite insistent that the colour has to be red… I did not go until the extent of searching in the supermarket to look for the candy that I wanted. I just went to the neighbourhood provision shop, asking for red hard candy.

Apparently, hard candy seems to have “lose out” to soft candy. I can’t get any one and I eventually bought the Strepsil cherry flavour for this illustration. However, i am rather confident that you can get it in larger supermarkets with Fox brands or others.

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WHAT IS REQUIRED

Servings: about 30 cookies depending on size of the mould

• 90 grams of plain flour
• 60 grams of butter at room temperature
• 30 grams of icing sugar
• Some hard candy of your choice

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STEPS OF PREPARATION

• Pre-heat the oven to 160 degree Celsius.

• Cream the butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the flour, stir until well mixed. Transfer the dough out to a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into about 5 mm thickness.

• Use your preferred mould to mould the dough. Cut off the centre of the flower (I have use a simple piping nozzle).  Bake in the preheated oven of 160 degree Celsius for 10 minutes.

• While the cookies are baking, use something to break the hard candy. When the cookies are ready, take out, put a small amount of hard candies in the cavity at the centre of the cookies. Send back to the oven and bake for another 10 minutes. Let the cookies cooled completely in the baking tray before removing it and store in an air tight container.

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CONCLUSION

This cookie is definitely not a difficult cookie to prepare. It is rather easy and do not ask me where I get my mould.. In fact, any pineapple tarts mould will be able to give you a beautiful design. I got mine in a neighbourhood shop and have been with me for many years.  Do play around with the colour and patterns of your mould ..

For more Chinese New Year related cookies, snack and steamed cake recipes, you can have a copy of “Easy Chinese New Year Recipes – A step by step guide” that was packed with 30 recipes, 60 pages at a reasonable convenience fee of USD3.50. The recipes covered various recipes from auspicious radish cake to nian gao to traditional kuih bangkit to trendy London almond cookies. Of course not forgetting both type of pineapple tarts. You can purchase by clicking the link above. You can either pay using Pay Pal or Credit card account. Please ensure that you have an PDF reader like Acrobat or iBooks in your mobile phone or iPad if you intended to read it in your ipad or mobile phone. Should there be any problems of purchasing, feel free to contact me at kengls@singnet.com.sg and separate arrangement can be made.

Hope you like the post today. Cheers and have a nice day.

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I’m submitting this post to Best Recipes for Everyone Jan & Feb 2015 Event Theme: My Homemade Cookies organized by Fion of XuanHom’s Mom and co-hosted by Victoria Bakes