Chinese New Year delights 2013: Butter Cookies

I always feel jealous when hearing people giving homemade cookies to their relatives and friends on Chinese New Year. Every year, I spent a lot of money to buy Chinese New Year cookies for relatives and friends too. That's why I swear to myself that I must learn baking some Chinese New  Year cookies in year 2013. Hence, baking cookies and cakes has become one of my resolutions this year.

As a beginner, I am only interested in simple, and yet yummy recipe. I finally found one online weeks ago. I was eagerly waiting for my girls' tuition to resume. I fully utilize this ME time to bake when they are having their tuition in the study room.

I managed to bake 3 batches of butter cookies last night.

My first batch of butter cookies that I used a small plastic gadget to pipe the flower shape. I found it too time consuming and  I got fed up with the hassle after piping for about 10 butter cookies. I threw away the piping gadget and went for free hand shape as in the below picture. 

Free hand shaping and pressing with a fork that had dipped into icing sugar. 

I have got a star nozzle and some piping bags free from Angeline today. I must make a beautiful flower shape butter cookies in my second attempt. 

This recipe that I used was a good one. I know it because of the comments that I have got last night from my two princesses and this morning from my colleagues. If you are curious of the Angpau decoration that I used as the background, it is actually the small parts that my girls are going to make it as a lantern in their Art Craft lesson. 

Butter Cookies (recipe is credited to Christina Ho)
Ingredients:

• 200 gm cake flour

• 130 gm melted butter

• 35 gm caster sugar

• 65 gm icing sugar

• 1 egg, whisked, about 50 gm

• 1/4 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190C (375F). I preheat my oven to 180C only. 
2. Cut butter into cubes and allow to soften at room temperature. If time is limited, here is a quickest way to soften butter. Melt butter in microwave at high-medium power for 10 seconds or so, then transfer to freezer for a few minutes. When the butter begins to be frozen again and thickens, it’s ready to use. If not, put it back to freezer for more minutes.
3. Cream butter with an electric mixer over medium speed until smooth. Add caster sugar and icing sugar, continue to cream until fluffy .
4. Add one-third of the whisked egg into the butter mixture at a time. Stir and combine well between adding egg each time, the volume increases and colour lightens .
5. Stir in vanilla essence and combine well.
6. Sift flour into the egg mixture . Use a spatula to combine all ingredients. Don’t over stir, just incorporate the flour into the mixture. Transfer the batter into an icing bag. Pipe the batter on a lined baking tray with baking paper, in 1.5-inch (3.8 cm) circles, that’s about 1 tablespoon each of batter, evenly spaced 1.5-inch apart. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 to 13 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool on a wire rack completely. Store in an air-tight container.

Tips:

1. The magic ingredients in this recipe are both caster sugar and icing sugar. Two kinds of sugar will work together, producing the perfect balance of delicate, crispy texture, and keeping the pattern well in shape after baking. If you only use icing sugar, the cookies won’t be crispy as you expect. Without using the icing sugar, the original pattern of cookies that you pipe out wouldn’t be kept so clear and beautiful. (Note: icing sugar is a super fine, powdered form of sugar.)
2. The baking time of cookies is quite short at high temperature. Don’t leave them unattended, especially for the last few minutes because you don’t want them burnt.
3. When the colour turns to the point a bit lighter than you prefer, then you can remove the cookies from oven. The cookies will get a bit darker after a while. Well, practice makes things perfect. After some trials, you’ll bake cookies with perfect colour to your liking.

Read more: http://en.christinesrecipes.com/2010/02/butter-cookies-for-chinese-new-year.html#ixzz2HRRaXXEm

 I am submitting this post to Chinese New Year Delights 2013 hosted by Sonia aka Nasi Lemak Lover

p/s: There are 2 colleagues told me that my butter cookies tasted like the blue round tin Danish butter cookies. Hooray!