Blessing Cookies (Fortune Cookies) for Chinese New Year

These blessing cookies (aka fortune cookies) are fantastic as snacks enjoyed during the Chinese New Year as an alternative to the traditional butter cookies, that are often presented to relatives and friends. You can place your hand-written blessing notes inside. What a meaningful gift to your loved ones.

Cheat’s Sweet Egg Twists (Chinese New Year Snack)

23 January, Monday is a big day for Chinese people all over the world. Only two more days to go, then we’ll start the year of Dragon. Yay! Our family celebration often starts from the New Year’s Eve dinner (團年飯). Not only we enjoy the relaxed festive holidays, but also many delicious traditional Chinese foods, being around with family and friends with lots of fun. Some traditional savory and sweet snacks, like radish cake, taro cake, glutinous rice flour cake and cookies, seem to be a must on my list. Yet, sometimes, I like to tweak a traditional dish into a modern and quick one.

Ever tried a traditional sweet egg twists (蛋散, dansan) ? It’s my childhood CNY snack in Hong Kong. Some Chinese restaurants offer egg twists as dim sum. The egg twist is primarily made of flour, egg, sugar and lard. Its soft and crisp texture makes it very addictive to people who have a sweet tooth. If you are already tired of making too many CNY foods but still need some snacks to fill in on the go. Here’s a cheat’s version of sweet egg twists I tried the other day. You could make some at the moment when your visitors suddenly dropped by. Best of all, this cheat version doesn’t need any lard at all in order to make the twists crispy. Take a look at the recipe, and you’ll know how.

Mandarin Pancakes for Peking Duck (Chinese New Year Celebration)

Chinese New Year Day falls on the 23rd of January this year, about two weeks time to go. We all start thinking about what we should cook for the celebration. The traditional dishes, like radish cakes, coconut pudding, steamed fish and Chinese mushrooms seem to be a must on our list. I’m still searching new ideas of cooking something new to my family.

After I served the first piece of pancake for hubby, then quickly went back to fry my second piece for myself, I heard he yielded out a word, “YUMMY”. At the very moment, I knew this dish could be on my Chinese New Year menu. It’s a perfect appetizer.

The mandarin pancakes are best served when they are still warm. They are chewy and springy in texture, going so well with the crispy duck skin. One more remark, the hoisin sauce is a must because it adds more flavour into the wrappers. Traditionally, Chinese people use cucumber and the white parts of leek (京蔥). But you could replace with julienned white parts of large spring onions, or add any greens you like.

Banana Apple Muffins

Happy New Year, everyone! Before the new year’s eve, I finally uploaded the last batch of recipes and photos to my publisher. Right at the moment I hit the “upload” button, I started feeling like over the moon, so released. I can’t wait to see my first cookbook in print. Thanks so much for all your support and leaving encouraging words on my fan page and blog.

Here comes one of my favourite snacks, cup cakes, as the first blog post in 2012. They are easy to whip up in the last minute. This time I tried the new muffin tray bought from Ikea. It got deeper holes, so the cup cakes took a bit longer baking time. I was very pleased with the tall, and gorgeous looking of these cup cakes as much as I love their taste. The banana and apple are perfect partners to make me an enjoyable and delicious snack as a reward to myself whenever I finish a project.

Chocolate Crackle Cookies (Christmas treats)

We’re going to enjoy a very hot Christmas festive season as usual in a few more days. Although I still haven’t got myself used to celebrate Christmas in summer, I’ve learned to create imagery pictures of snowing scenes in my mind by enjoying some cold desserts or something look like snow. What I like about these cookies is their snowy look with natural cracks produced by both of the magic of baking powder and icing sugar, giving me more of a Christmas feel. Best of all, the crunchy outside and the fluffy, soft inside make these cookies so enjoyable.