More cookies with egg whites

As I was left with some egg whites after my charity bake sale, I found and tried 2 types of new cookies that use only egg whites.

This Almond Cranberry Cookies is taken from 孟老师的100道手工饼干. I substituted shortening with butter. I wonder if it makes the difference. I find that the cookies are not light and crisp (酥) enough. But the toasted almond gives the cookies a very nice fragrance and it tastes good with the slight sweet/sour taste with cranberry.

Almond Cranberry Cookies 杏仁蔓越莓酥饼

Ingredients (about 35 pieces):

35g dried cranberries
35g almond flakes (toasted at 150 deg C till light golden brown)
100g cake flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
35g icing sugar
15g corn flour
15g ground almond
50g shortening (I use cold butter)
25g egg white

Method:
1. Blend or chop finely dried cranberries and toasted almond together until fine.
2. Sift cake flour, baking powder, icing sugar and corn flour into a bowl. Then add in ground almond.
3. Rub in shortening into the flour mixture till fine crumbs are formed.
4. Add in egg white and the cranberry-almond mixture from step 1. Press to form a soft dough, do not knead.
5. Chill the dough for about 2 hours. Roll out the dough into 0.5cm thickness. Cut out cookies with cookie cutters.
6. Bake at 170 deg C for 20 minutes till light golden brown.

Recipe adapted from: 孟老师的100道手工饼干

The other cookies which I prefer over the above one is this Cat's Tongue Cookies from Carol's 烘焙新手必备的第一本书. When done correctly, the cookies are light and crispy and very hard to stop eating it! The only wrong thing I did was my fault actually. I ran out of piping bags and had to use a disposable type of plastic bag and resulted in horrible piping. My cookies don't look like cat's tongue at all. ;p

Cat's Tongue Cookies 猫舌饼干

Ingredients (about 30 pieces):

60g unsalted butter, softened
35g icing sugar
1/8 tsp salt
60g egg white
60g cake flour
zest from 1 lemon (I omitted)

Method:
1. Whisk butter and icing sugar till light and fluffy.
2. Add in egg white gradually in 4 separate additions.
3. Add in sifted flour in 2 separate additions.
4. Lastly, add in lemon zest and salt.
5. Fill the batter into piping bag with tip opening of 0.7cm in diameter.
6. Pipe out the batter into lengths of 6cm, leaving some space in between the cookies.
7. Bake at 160 deg C for about 10 minutes till the edges become light golden brown*.

*Note: Make sure the cookies are baked till dry, if not the cookies will turn chewy instead of crispy when cooled. To do that, you can either leave the cookies in the oven to cool in the residual heat after turning off the oven. Or bake the cookies at a lower heat of 120 deg C for another 10 minutes.

Recipe adapted from: 烘焙新手必备的第一本书 by Carol

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

Almond and Cranberry Cupcakes 杏仁蔓越莓杯子蛋糕

I'm a very picky eater. There are a lot of food that I don't like to eat. But as I grow older, I start to try eating more variety of food, especially fruits and vegetables that are beneficial to health. Pumpkins, sweet potatoes, brinjals, which I used to hate eating, now become my favourite dishes on the table.

Cranberries has never never ever been included in the list of food I eat. Few months ago, one of my twin nieces suffered from urinary tract infection. I heard that in the past when antibiotics was not available, doctors advised parents to give babies cranberry juice to treat urinary tract infection. Besides that, cranberries has a good amount of vitamins, antioxidants and anti-cancer properties. So, I decide to buy a pack of dried cranberries to try. At first bite, I thought they taste like haw flakes (山楂饼).

I have seen cranberries been used to bake cakes, cookies, breads and scones. Flipping through 孟老师的100道小蛋糕, I decide on this cranberry cake recipe (蔓越莓蛋糕). I change the name of this cake to Almond and Cranberry Cupcakes (杏仁蔓越莓杯子蛋糕) because almond is added too and it is the almond that makes the cake to smell so nice. It is a perfect treat for teatime!

I'm just trying to be smart to include a step-by-step photo description. The place where I prepare baking is at the other end of the kitchen, furthest away from window, which makes it hard to take good and bright photos. So forgive me for the quality of the photos. :)

Almond and Cranberry Cupcakes 杏仁蔓越莓杯子蛋糕

Ingredients (makes 11 mini cupcakes)

(A)
30g sliced almonds
60g dried cranberries (I use about 45g)

(B)
80g unsalted butter
60g icing sugar, sifted (I use 50g, still a little sweet)
2 egg yolks
2 tbsp milk
50g cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
10g milk powder

Method

1. Preheat oven at 150 deg C. Bake the sliced almonds for about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool down. Blend the baked sliced almonds and dried cranberries with a food processor. (If you don't have a food processor, you can chop them finely with a knife.)

2. Soften the butter at room temperature. Add in icing sugar and whisk until well-mixed.

3. Add in egg yolks and milk, whisk until well-mixed.

4. Add in sifted flour, baking powder and milk powder. Mix well with a spatula.

5. Add in chopped almonds and cranberries in step 1. Mix well.

6. Fill the batter into cupcake cases until 80% filled.

7. Bake at preheated oven at 180 deg C for 20-25 minutes (I bake for 15 minutes for mini cupcakes).

Recipe from: 孟老师的100道小蛋糕

Note: Written above is the original recipe from the book. Any adaptation is written in brackets ().

CNY Cookies 3

3 February 2008

These are the third batch of cookies I'm baking for CNY. I actually intend to bake Mickey & Minnie cookies and almond crisps this week. But after reading the last issue of U-weekly, I decided to bake 2 of the cookie recipes published in that issue - almond cookies and peanut cookies.

Almond cookies:

Peanut cookies:

The peanut cookies are extremely difficult to make. It uses a lot of peanut powder, which I think resulted in a very crumbly dough. It was very hard to roll the dough and cut the cookies. In the end, I tried to improve by pressing the dough into the cookie cutter.

Here are the two recipes from U-weekly magazine:

Almond Cookies

Ingredients (I make 26 pieces with half the recipe)
110g butter
50g castor sugar
1/4 tbsp almond essence
30g egg
120g plain flour
50g cornflour
1/4 tsp baking soda
60g almond powder

Method
1. Place butter, castor sugar and almond essence together, mix evenly till creamy.
2. Add egg and mix evenly.
3. Add flour, corn flour and baking soda and mix evenly.
4. Add almond powder and mix evenly.
5. Place dough on tracing paper, roll cookie dough to 10mm thickness.
6. Cut up cookie dough with cookie cutter and place almond bits on top of the cookie to decorate.
7. Preheat oven to 175C and bake for 18 minutes.

Peanut Cookies

Ingredients (I make 55 pieces)
70g butter
50g fine sugar
30g egg
70g plain flour
150g peanut powder

Method
1. Place butter and fine sugar together, mix evenly till creamy.
2. Add egg and mix evenly.
3. Add flour and peanut powder to the mix and stir evenly.
4. Place dough on tracing paper, roll cookie dough to 10mm thickness.
5. Cut up cookie dough with cookie cutter and place a peanut on top of the cookie to decorate.
6. Preheat oven to 160C and bake for 18 minutes.

Happy 2008!

1 January 2008

Here comes the first post of the year 2008. I got 2 sets of new disney cookie cutters on Christmas and today is the best day to try it out.


Got the recipe from Happy Homebaker. And it was indeed not an easy task to make the cookies. For me, I was able to cut out and stamp the face quite easily without sticking. But I had problem lifting the cookies up to place them on the baking tray, especially for Tigger. Most of the time, I either broke them or they would become out of shape. I found that the cookies couldn't be too thin as they would break even more easily.


After some effort, this was the result. I realized that I should have pressed the face harder as the facial expressions were not very clear and deep. I also noticed that my cookies look cracked, as compared to Happy Homebaker's. I wonder why is it so? Nevertheless, I thought they all look very cute and taste very buttery and crunchy as I added extra cornflour.


With extra egg white left, I use it to make almond crisps. Remember the last time I failed? No problem of sticking for this time as I have used the Glad baking paper. I prefer these to almond tuiles as they do not lose crispiness easily.

Wow, these 2 cookies seem to make excellent Chinese New Year cookies. That will be my plan for CNY. :)

Happy New Year to everyone!

Orange Almond Cupcakes

22 November 2007

This recipe is taken from one of Alex Goh's book. The original recipe fills the mixture into greased cupcake moulds and it looks like that.


And this is how my cake looks like.


Erm... very far from the book right? I don't know why my cupcakes and muffins always rise until like a volcano that is going to explode and the top will always crack. Look at how flat and nice top the original one has.

I tried 2 versions of this recipe. After mixing A and B and adding orange juice and zest, I divided the batter into 2 portions. One half I added the butter as in the recipe, the other half I added vegetable oil. I just want to know if it will affect the taste as I thought it will be healthier to replace butter with vegetable oil. Result is quite obvious lah. The one with the butter definitely taste better, but I think the oil version just lose out by 0.5 points. Both are great!

Recipe for Orange Almond Cupcakes (I make 10 small ones with half the recipe)

Ingredients
(A)
4 eggs
2 eggs yolks
175g sugar
(B)
190g plain flour
50g ground almonds
1½ tsp baking powder
(C)
40g orange juice
1 orange zest, grated
200g butter, melted
(Garnish)
Flaked almonds

Method
1. Whip (A) until sugar dissolves and it turns thick. (Note: overwhipping (A) will cause the cake to collapse).
2. Fold in (B) and mix until well blended.
3. Stir in (C) and mix until well incorporated.
4. Spoon it into cupcake cases and sprinkle some flaked almonds on top.
5. Bake at 190C for 20 minutes. Remove and cool.

Almond & Green Tea Tuiles

4 November 2007

I don't know how to pronounce this. I think "tuiles" sounds like "twills". Tuile is French for tile. It's a thin and crispy French cookie that got its name because it copies the shape of roofing tiles once used in France.

I got the recipe from Do What I Like. It's almost similar to the almond crisps that I had tried (unsuccessfully) before. The only difference is adding some melted butter for this tuile recipe. I left out the green tea powder initially as I wanted to make 2 different flavours. Then halfway during baking, I added some green tea powder to the remaining batter to make green tea tuiles. After the bad experience from the last time I baked the almond crisps, I use Glad baking paper this time and the cookies really do not stick to the baking paper, even without greasing.


The tuile is done by spreading a thin circle of batter on the baking paper using the back of the spoon. When baking is done, you have to remove it from the tray quickly and place it over a rolling pin and press gently to make the curved shape.

Here are some of the things that happened during baking:
1. It is important to spread the batter very thinly, about the thickness of the almond. Or else the tuiles will not be crispy enough. Make sure to spread evenly too. Some of the first few tuiles that I made, break when I try to curve them on the rolling pin cos I did not spread evenly.

2. Bake 4 tuiles at a time. Cos you need to place them on the rolling pin quickly. They will become too crispy to roll when they cool down.

3. I'm not sure if my oven temperature is too high. I set at 170C but it browned quite fast and I took about 5 minutes only instead of 7-8 minutes.

The tuiles don't stay crispy for very long. It's best eaten immediately after baking. And remind you, it's so nice that you can easily finish everything at one go. I quite like the green tea flavour. Very refreshing taste. Hm... maybe can try adding cocoa powder the next time to make chocolate tuiles. :)