Chinese New Year Bakes 2012

My baking blog seems to be gathering cobwebs due to several weeks of neglect. Before it continues to fall apart due to lack of maintenance, it is time to do some "Spring Cleaning" and "repair works".

This post was supposed to be up during Chinese New Year period. For this Chinese New Year, I have decided to move away from doing just the usual pineapple tarts. Come to think of it, it is my fourth year doing the all-time festive favourite. Before I could decide if I want to make the pineapple paste from scratch, mum happily handed me two packets of store-bought paste, leaving me with no choice but to use them.

Ever since I had my maiden attempt on making homemade pineapple jam, the bar has been raised. I am no longer satisfied with the one-dimensional plainly sweet pineapple jam. There is far too much sugar in store-bought paste, probably necessary to allow the paste to keep for a long period of time. In addition, store-bought jam is much drier compared to homemade ones, does not taste as fruity and lack the cinnamon taste which gives it the extra oomph.

Next year, I will likely not be doing any pineapple tarts and will be shifting the focus to trying out other CNY cookies instead.

Preparing the pineapple balls and pineapple tart crust.

Store bought pineapple paste. Sweet and sticky.

Pineapple tart pastry made with Lurpak butter.

Besides doing pineapple tarts, I have tried Florence's peanut cookies recipe. These cookies are so fragile that they crumble in the mouth right away, giving the melt-in-the-mouth texture. Personally, I prefer my peanut cookies to be firm and crunchy, but taste-wise there is nothing for me to find fault with, for they are packed with loads of peanut flavour. I will be using caster sugar in place of the icing sugar for this same recipe next CNY to give a crunchy texture instead.

Just a few tubs of CNY goodies I have made.

Peanut cookies and pineapple tarts.  

Peanut Cookies (recipe from Do What I Like by Florence)
Taste and Texture: Strong peanut flavour with melt-in-the-mouth texture.

click on the following link for recipe:
recipe


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Bakertan's Christmas Goodies - Chunky Peanut, Chocolate Chip and Cinnamon Cookies

The day after I returned back from Bangkok, Stephanie passed me two packs of cookies, along with her mum's stash of xmas ornaments (for decorating my log cakes), a handmade card/cookie tag and a xmas present. She also passed me snow powder knowing that it will come in handy for my log cakes. Thats indeed very sweet (pun) of her. The cookies are cream cheese walnut cookies and orange craneberry cookies. Both cookies are very tender and crumbly in texture (as opposed to firm and crumbly like shortcrust pastry) and I must say they are pretty good. Coincidentally, the cream cheese walnut cookies she made was on my to-bake list and it was the exact same recipe from Martha Stewart. 

For the xmas present from her, I recieved a book (written in chinese) explaining the science of baking. I started reading it on the same day and its indeed very informative. There isn't much pictures but the detailed explanations more than made up for it. Thanks a lot, Stephanie!

This is the last entry for my 1st round of xmas goodies. There will be the 2nd, 3rd and 4th round of Dec festive baking coming up. When I first came across the recipe, the name caught my attention and I knew I had to make these chunky peanut, chocolate chip and cinnamon cookies. Instead of the usual crunchy peanut butter cookies, salted roasted peanuts, cinnamon and chocolate chips are added, giving the cookies a whole new depth.

I couldn't really figure out the taste of the cinnamon but it somehow elevates the fragrance of the cookie. Will probably add a bit more the next time I make these. I tried to vary the baking times and found that the recipe works better for a crunchy textured cookie as opposed to a soft cookie.

It will be Xmas in a few hours time. Merry Xmas to all my family, friends and readers! Have lots of fun wining and dining. Cheers and have a wonderful festive season ahead!

Chunky Peanut, Chocolate Chip and Cinnamon Cookies ( recipe adapted from Martha Stewart Cookies)

Serving size: 90 cookies
Taste and texture: Crunchy chunky
Equipment and materials:
1) Stand electric beater/ handheld electric beater or wooden spoon
2) Flour sieve
3) Measuring spoon set
4) Spatula
5) Mixing bowls
6) Wire rack
7) Baking trays/ cookie sheets
8) Baking / parchment paper
9) Balloon whisk

Ingredients:
285g plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon (can add a bit more)
150g unsalted butter, softened
150g creamy peanut butter
140g brown sugar
80g castor sugar
2 eggs (about 55-60g each)
240g chocolate chips
100g coarsely chopped salted, roasted peanuts
2 tsp vanilla

Making the Cookies:
Mixing the dry ingredients: Sift flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon into a large bowl. Whisk the dry ingredients with a baloon whisk to ensure even distribution.

Creaming butter and peanut butter: In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and  peanut butter for 2 minutes on medium speed. Add the sugars and continue creaming for another 2-3 minutes.

Adding eggs: Add in eggs one after the other into the butter mixture, beating the mixture well before the next egg is added.

Forming the dough: Add in the dry ingredients to the butter-egg mixture and beat on low speed to combine. Stop once the dough starts to comes together. Scrape and fold in any stray flour with a spatula.

Adding peanuts, chocolate chips and vanilla: Fold in the peanuts, chocolate chips and vanilla to distribute them evenly into the cookie dough.

Shaping the cookie dough: Refrigerate the dough for about 15-20 minutes to firm it up. Scoop rounded teaspoons (slightly heaped) of dough and shape them into balls. Place shaped cookie balls on lined cookie trays/sheets and leave some space between each dough to allow for expansion. Flatten them slightly with ur palm.

Preheat oven: Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Baking and storing cookies: Bake the cookies at 180 degrees C for 13-16 mins. Transfer baked cookies to wire rack allow them to cool on wire rack completely before storing in an airtight container.

Notes:
1) If cookies soften after storage, bake/toast them for a couple of minutes to re-crisp them.
2) Confirm the baking time by making a test batch of 2-3 cookie dough as the oven temperature and baking time varies from model to model. Once you are satisfied with the texture, use the same baking time for the rest of the cookie dough.
3) The shaped cookie dough balls need to be flatten as the cookie does not spread much during baking, unlike most other cookies.
4) Half recipe to yield less cookies.

Bakertan's Christmas Goodies 1 - Two Cookies and a Log Cake

Whew, last weekend was a tiring one! For the entire saturday afternoon, I was busy shopping for ingredients at Phoon Huat, Cold Storage and Ntuc. The ingredients I lugged back home weighed almost close to 7kg - flour, butter, cream cheese, mascarpone cheese, whipping cream etc... Luckily I brought my backpack along. 

After taking a short rest, I went to battle armed with my oven, mixer and my arsenal of firepower - flour, nuts, peanut butter, raisins, cornflakes and chocolate chips.  The entire battle lasted 7 hours in total before a truce was called. The battle trophies? 90 chunky peanut, chocolate chip and cinnamon cookies and 60 cornflakes raisins chocolate chip cookies. I have never made this much cookies in a single day in my life! Imagine having to shape all these cookies. Very tedious!

The battle continued on sunday and the battle trophy this time round was a chocolate log cake. I didn't do a good job with the rolling of the swiss roll and it cracked horribly after rolling. Nevertheless, I took it as a log cake practice and slathered chocolate buttercream over the cracked swiss roll. It covered up really well and I was rather pleased with my first log cake.

All the above bakes were meant for my first christmas gathering on sunday evening. It may sound a bit early, but we had no choice since most of us won't be around when it draws close to Christmas. Apart from serving its cause as an aftermeal dessert, the log cake also doubled up as a birthday cake (in advance) for one of my friends. Happy Birthday Queen!

After cutting the cake, the interior didn't look like it was badly cracked. I remember one blogger mentioning that log cakes are very forgiving. They are indeed!  

I would like to take this opportunity to dedicate this log cake to my blogger friends Eelin and Sheryl since they are dec babies too. Happy Birthday ladies!

Unlike the same Christmas gathering from previous years, there is quite a bit of sweets and baked goodies going around this time. They are:

• peppermint candy canes
• chocolate almonds (made with valrhona, good stuff!)
• chocolate cream cheese brownies (my friend made it from my cookie book. I'm going to make this one day.)
• chunky peanut, chocolate chip and cinnamon cookies and cornflakes raisins chocolate chip cookies which I prepared.
• Christmas tree butter cookie

Christmas sure is a good chance and the perfect excuse to bake. I can already forsee that I will be making christmas goodies for at least 3 other occasions. Its going to be a bakeful month and more cookies, log cakes and perhaps brownies. I think I will probably do 6-8 different types of cookies for this festive season.  

The recipes for the two cookies and log cake will be featured in upcoming posts. Stay tuned...