Almond Biscuits – 杏仁饼干

INTRODUCTION

I have to say that I am a bit disappointed with the appearance of these almond biscuits after baking…

The moulding imprint was still there but was not as sharp as I wanted it to be.. Well, I should have expected that most cookies will expand after cooking and imprints will be blurred..

Do not ask me what is my cookies cutter? It is just a simple snow flake pattern and when I want to dislodge it from the mould, I use a chopstick to push it out those created this petal pattern.

You can always used your creativity to get the pattern you want. As a word of advise, simpler pattern will create a more elegant cookie design.

I also did not do well in taking images for this batch of cookies or biscuits. The biscuit looked much better physically then what you seen in the picture. I found the angle of taking the photo is not very satisfactory and the complex patterns overlapped each other and become a stack of cookies with odd design… Sigh

Nothing much to write about this cookie. It is a simple cookie well liked by many especially during Chinese New Year or other festivals..  It is made of ground almond and some people do sprinkle almond nibs or almond flakes on top of the cookies. As for shape wise, it can be of any shape and feel free to choose your favourite cookies cutter.

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WHAT IS REQUIRED

Recipe adapted from: Almond Biscuits

Servings: Depending on size of mould  60-80 cookies

• 200 grams of plain flour
• 150 grams of butter soften at room temperature
• 80 grams of castor sugar
• 80 grams of ground almond or almond meal
• 1 tablespoon of potatoes starches
• 1 tablespoon of mung bean flour (can be substitute with potatoes starches)
• 1 egg yolk

 

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STEPS OF PREPARATION

• Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk, beat until well combined. Add the ground almond followed by sifted plain flour, potatoes starches and mung bean flour. Fold until well mixed. You can also use the standing mixer’s lowest speed to do the mixing.

• Transfer to a lightly floured surface, put the dough on top of a clingy wrap. Cover the dough with another clingy wrap, roll the dough until it is about 2-3 mm thick. Take out the clingy wrap on the top, use your preferred cookie cutter to cut into your desired shape. Transfer to the baking tray, egg wash the cookies and bake in the preheated oven of 160 degree Celsius for 12-15 minutes. or until golden brown. For egg washing, crack one egg yolk and mixed with 2 drops of oil and 1 tablespoon of water, stir well, sift before applying the egg glazing.

• After the cookies were baked, let it rest in the baking tray before transferring to a cooling rack for cooling. Cooled completely before store in an air tight container.

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CONCLUSION

Quite a simple recipe to try out.. In fact there are many almond related cookies recipes and this is one of them. Rest be assured that this is a delicious light cookie and I especially like the buttery fragrance and crumbly texture of the biscuit..

This recipe was included in Page 28 and Page 29 of the following E-book. 

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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Another Short Bread Biscuits For This Chinese New Year – Nan Khatai or Indian Short Bread Cookies (杏仁酥油饼）

This is not a new post. It is a post that I have issued last year and I promised to bake this for Chinese New Year. There are two recipes, the first recipes uses ghee entirely where as the second modified recipes uses a mixture of butter and ghee and some corn flour to better the shape of the cookies.

You can either use recipe 1 or recipe 2 and that very much depends on your needs. Personally, I preferred to have recipe 1 for home consumption whereas for gifts as friends or relatives, recipe 2 is preferred.

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ORIGINAL POST

INTRODUCTION

Looking at these cookies, how shall you describe them? Probably, you will reply that the cookies appear to be flat, thin, rusky, fragile and very light.

What can you infer from these characteristics? These characteristics just indicate to foodies that the cookies are buttery and melt in the mouth!

Yes, these cookies really melt in your mouth meaning you do not even need to use your teeth during your ingestion. You can just put one cookie in your mouth, your tongue and saliva (description a bit gross) will help you to do the job, it melts and send it directly down to your palate. 

This is definitely not a trendy cookie and its ingredients are rather uncommon in Singapore and Malaysia’s pastry.  It is a cookie with long history and it has a proper name called “NAN KHATAI” or “Indian Short Bread”. Ghee, a type of clarified butter was used instead of normal butter. Semolina flour were added to the cookies and therefore at times it is also called “sugee cookies” though the name ”sugee cookies” can be overly general.

I have had this recipe for years, meaning more than 10 years. I have never take a step out to prepare this cookie. I remember one of my brothers loved sugee cakes and sugee cookies and that is the reason why I have this recipe with me. Yesterday, I have decided to bake this cookie.

I managed to get this recipe when I searched for another cookie called “melting moments”.  This cookie were also prepared using ghee, shape into a small ball and dusted with powdered icing sugar. It is one of my favourite Chinese New Year cookie. Years ago, when I searched for melting moments recipe, Nan Khatai’s recipes appeared. Immediately, I am attracted to this cookie because of its light yellowish colour. Analysing the ingredient, I knew it will be a very tasty recipe. I printed out and kept it until today. I am very happy that the recipe is still on the internet and you can locate the original recipe here.

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GHEE AND SEMOLINA FLOUR 

The two most unique ingredients for the recipe were ghee and semolina flour. Both ingredients were used abundantly in South Asia Continent’s cuisines. Ghee is  a type of clarified butter with a slightly higher fat content. Ghee is no simple fat, for me, it smells much more aromatic than butter, in fact it is more expensive than butter. A 150 g tin of ghee will  cost SGD3.50 whereas a 250 g of butter will cost only SGD3-4 depending on the brands.

In my humble opinion, if you have tasted ghee, you may not like butter or margarine. I would attribute that the “melt in your mouth” properties of this cookie is due to the usage of ghee. Though the original recipe called for butter but I have insisted of using ghee and I can immediately tell that butter would not be able to produce this light texture after I took my first bite. It will be good if readers can read more about ghee in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee.

Malaysia and Singapore’s Eurasian communities like to use semolina flour in their pastry. One of the most famous Eurasian festival cake is sugee cake and semolina flour was used. You can get it rather easily in most supermarkets that sell various types of flours.

According to “The Food Encyclopaedia” published by Robert Rose Inc. 2006, it was written:

“ Semolina – a coarsely ground durum wheat flour where the bran and germ have been sifted out, very light in colour and texture, used for making pasta, gnocchi, cereals, couscous, puddings and soups. From the Italian semolina, a diminutive of semola, meaning “bran”, and similia, meaning very fine wheat flour”

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WHAT IS REQUIRED

Recipe adapted from: Nan Khatai by Diana Desserts (servings: about 50 pieces of 2-3 cm diameter cookies)

• 150 grams of self raising flour

• 50 grams of semolina flour

• 75 grams of castor sugar

• 150 grams of ghee or butter

• 1 egg beaten

• half a teaspoon of vanilla essence

• Adequate almond flakes or whole almonds for the cookies.

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STEPS OF PREPARATION

• Pre-heat your oven to 185 degree Celsius.

• Have 2 baking trays ready and line with parchment or baking paper.

• In a big mixing bowl, beat the ghee and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, beat until well mixed.

• Add in semolina flour and self raising flour, use hand to fold in or continue using machine to “stir” until well mixed.

• Put your batter in a piping bag and pipe the  batter in the baking tray of your desired size. Leave adequate space for expansion. Put some almond flakes or almond chunks or whole almonds on top of the pastry.

• Baked in the oven at 185 degree Celsius for about 15 minutes.

• Cool the cookies completely before store in an air tight container,

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CONCLUSION

This is an extremely nice cookie and in my humble opinion, it is even better than the traditional English short bread that I have prepared earlier.

It is able to melt in the mouth because of ghee which is a clarified butter but with a slightly higher fat content. If you look at the flat cookies, you will know this is a hard core version using ghee (not butter or margarine) and it will be very light. In fact, I have weighed the cookies and one cookie weigh about 6 grams. This is extremely light!

If you Google Nan Khatai, if the shape of the Nan Khatai is flat and like what I have prepared in this post, it is definitely made with ghee. If it had a very nice shape and all are of the same size, the cookies are most likely to be made from butter. I am quite insistent that readers used ghee instead of butter.

This is the cookie I strongly recommend and if there is any cookie  that I want to sell  during  Chinese New Year or other festivals, this will definitely my top priority.

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UPDATED ON 4 JANUARY 2013

This is the second batch of nan khatai cookies I made on 4 January 2014 and made minor adjustments as highlighted in red as follows:

• 150 grams of self raising flour
• 50 grams of semolina flour
• 75 grams of castor sugar
• 100 grams of ghee
• 50 grams of butter
• 2 teaspoon of corn flour
• 1 egg beaten
• half a teaspoon of vanilla essence
• Adequate almond flakes or whole almonds for the cookies.

OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENTS OF THE SECOND BATCH

For home consumption, it is still better to use the first recipe as it is more aromatic and really melt in the mouth. However, shape is compromised and it may break rather easily due to its light texture. However it is extremely delicious.

For gifts for friend or relatives, the second modified recipe is recommended as it is more presentable and the taste wouldn’t compromise much at all. But, a sincere advise is not to use whole almond or cashew nuts as the texture of the nuts does not blend well with the melt in the mouth texture. Almond flakes is still recommended.

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This recipe was included in Page 10 and Page 11 of the following E-book. 

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.

• For more recipes, you can refer to my RECIPE INDEX (updated as at 26 November 2014)  here and you can follow me at PINTEREST or visit the blog’s FACEBOOK PAGE to keep abreast of my future posts. Also follow me at INSTAGRAM or TSU, a new social network for some more personal sharing other than recipes.

• You can also join the FOOD BLOGGERS AND FOODIES UNITED FACEBOOK GROUP  to see more recipes. Currently there are about 21,500 members sharing various food photos . I am posting my daily home cooked food in the above Facebook Group daily. I would be more than happy if you can  post in the Group for the recipes that you tried from my blog.

• If you are a Pinterest user and you are interested to have more recipes, you can join or follow this Pinterest Board set up by me  where there are more than 2600 recipes worldwide and pinned by various bloggers: FOOD BLOGGERS AND FOODIES UNITED PINTEREST BOARD.