Cherry Blossom Cookies


After much nudging from our little aspiring baker, Audrey, I finally found the time to help her prepare Cherry Cookie dough.   But when we saw how beautiful these cookies turned up, we decided to rename it Cherry Blossom Cookies because they reminded us of our favorite Cherry Blossom in Taiwan.  Guess both of us are really homesick. 

The cookie dough is actually a modification of a long forgotten Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. End result - proud like a peacock.  Audrey did much of the kneading and cutting.  She brought them to school the following day to share with her friends, and much to her delight, they think this is the best cookie by far.  Even her teacher got a piece.  She would never have suspected the baker of the day was actually her student.

Here you go...

Ingredients
Plain flour,  360g
Baking soda,  1 tsp
Baking powder,  1/2 tsp
Salt,  1-1/2 tsp
Butter,  270g
Castor Sugar,  210g
Egg yolk,  3
Vanilla essence,  1 tsp
Almond essence ,   1/2 tsp
Chopped almond, 150g
Chopped cherry, about 30g (decoration purpose only)

Method
  1. Toast chopped/diced almond at 120C for 5 mins.  Set aside to cool.
  2. Cream sugar and butter until pale white, beat in egg yolk and vanilla essence
  3. Sift flour with baking soda, and baking powder
  4. Fold in the flour into creamed butter mixture
  5. Mix in nuts
  6. Bake at 175 – 180 C until golden brown, about 10 – 20 min depending on oven
P.S.:
  1. I ran out of castor sugar and substituted it with light brown sugar, that was why the cookies turned out much darker than it should be.
  2. If we were to embark on this project again, I will eliminate the chopped almonds and replace it with ground almond.  This shall eliminate those white spots on the cookies and improve their appearance greatly.  Here's  the revised recipe:
Ingredients:
Plain flour, 360g  270g
Ground Almond,   80g
Baking soda, 1 tsp  1/2 tsp
Baking powder, 1/2 tsp (optional)
Salt, 1-1/2 tsp   3/4 tsp
Butter, 270g   250g
Castor Sugar, 210g 180g
Egg yolk, 3
Vanilla extract, 1 tsp 1/2 tsp
Almond essence , 1/2 tsp
Chopped almond, 150g
Chopped cherry, about 30g (decoration purpose only)

The method is pretty much the same as the earlier recipe.  Add the ground almond mixture to the butter mixture just before you fold in the flour.  This recipe is similar to the Classic Almond Sugee Cookie with slight modification.  The main differences are:
  1. Butter is used here, instead of ghee.
  2. Baking powder is not required in Sugee Cookie dough.   Some recipes call for baking soda instead.
  3. Ground almond and flour are usually toasted and cooled before used in Sugee Cookie recipe.  Toasting removes the moisture and probably helps to yield a crumbly cookie texture too.
Suggestion - if you like your cookies to be crispy and slightly harder, then change the egg content to 1 white and 2 yolk instead of using all yolk.  The presence of egg white hardens the cookie and helps to reduce its "tendency to crumble".

Comments

Post a Comment