Chinese new year baking made easy: Peanut cookie, Butter cookie and London Almond cookie recipe

Chinese new year is just 2 days away and yours truly is so bogged down with a backlog of blogposts, assignments and mandarin lessons (trying to improve my non-existing mandarin speaking and reading skills haha). Nevertheless, I told myself that it is utmost important for me to bake during this festive season, regardless of my hectic schedule.

I would love to attempt tricky recipes such as the chinese love letters, tapioca chips or even kuih bangkit but as time showed no mercy, I have decided to compile a list of easy recipes to use. The results were as expected as I have had a rough idea of what to do. Do give these recipes a go if you are stuck in a stick situation like me!:)

Peanut cookie recipe as seen here. I have used this recipe many times now and I think its a pretty good one to keep in your recipe book. Just be careful of how much oil you add as peanuts do have oil in them!! Too much oil = broken cookies :(

Butter cookie recipe (makes about 30 pieces) :

180g butter, softened
1/3 cup icing
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup cornflour
1 cup plain flour
50g glace cherries, chopped

Beat butter with icing sugar until the mixture appears well combined (about 5 minutes) before adding in your vanilla extract. Sift cornflour with plain flour and incorporate the wet mixture to it. Place mixture into a piping bag and pipe whatever shape you desire (mine cracked a little due to poor piping boo). Top with your cherry piece and bake at 150C for 15 minutes or until it appears slightly browned.

London almond cookie recipe (makes about 35 pieces, depending on how much dough mixture you have) :
125g butter
75g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
225g plain flour
1/2 tsp rice flour
250g whole almonds, lightly roasted
50g almonds chopped finely
450g cooking chocolate

Cream butter and icing sugar together until it appears well combined (about 5 minutes) before adding in your egg yolk and vanilla extract. Continue to mix for an extra 2 minutes. Sift plain flour with rice flour and add wet mixture to it.

Make sure your almonds are cooled before encasing them with the dough mixture. Make sure the dough is not too thick or thin when wrapping the almond otherwise it might fall apart or overfill the little cupcake paper case.  Bake at 150C for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt chocolate and add a small knob (about 20g of butter) to it for ease of spreading. Once the cookies have cooled, quickly spoon the chocolate over them and sprinkle with the chopped almonds. Refrigerate and enjoy!:)

That was not too difficult, was it. I think the butter cookie and london almond cookie recipe is pretty similar so you could definitely make a bigger batch of butter cookie and use half of it for the almond cookies. Make sure you have some pretty red containers to store your cookies! I am sure your guests will be very pleased to rock up at your place hehe:)