Chinese Peanut Cookies 花生饼

What’s the Lunar New Year without celebratory cookies? Just like Christmas for westerners, in SIN City every house you visit for the new year – you’ll have so many different types of cookies (mostly a sablé style cookie that’s crumbly and melt-in-the-mouth) to gorge yourself on. One of them, is this super delicious Chinese-style easy Peanut Cookie 花生饼 and it also conveniently happens to be vegetarian.

So how do you make Chinese New Year peanut cookies? Before we get into that, let’s have a kiki about Asian-style confectionary. In general, Chinese pastries are either made from an oil dough or a water dough. We don’t use butter in our pastries – that was introduced later on when our colonisers came and import/export boomed. Water dough is typically made for flaky pastry with lard, water and flour, whereas oil dough is simply flour and vegetable oil. Sometimes both doughs can be used in one recipe.

For these peanut cookies, it utilises an ‘oil dough’. All it takes it plain flour, oil and ground-up roasted peanuts. And of course salt and sugar. The resulting cookie is deliciously crumbly and suitable for all ages. Even if you’ve got no teeth! Barring of course, a peanut allergy. No shit Sherlock, these cookies contain peanuts. Other renditions of nut cookies include almond and walnut cookies. I love them both too but this was just simpler and does not require any butter.

At least in my mind, this makes it better for you. HAHA! Probably just kidding myself. Also, roasted peanuts are cheaper than almonds, if you are on a budget. This recipe is also easy to recreate if you’re living outside of Asia and you want a little Chinese New Year cheer in your homes.

Prep time: 30 minutes, Cook time: 15-17 minutes, Makes: ~80 cookies

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chinesecookie (@chinesecookie)

Ingredients

• 350g roasted and salted peanuts (300 for cookie dough, 50 for decoration)
• 120g caster sugar
• 250g plain flour
• ~150-80ml oil (I used sunflower oil)
• 5g sea salt
• 1 small egg (for egg wash)

Method

• Preheat the oven at about 180 degrees C. Depending on your oven, you may need to go to 200.
• Place the peanuts inside a food processor or blender. Blitz them until they are a fine sandy texture. The peanut sand will stick to each other due to the oil in them. Use clean dry hands to loosen the lumps.
• Sift the flour, sugar, and sea salt into the peanut mixture. Use a spatula to combine. The spatula can also help break up the lumps of peanuts to ensure proper incorporation of the flour mix.
• Pour 1/2 of the oil into the peanut mixture and knead with dry hands. A sandy dough should start to come together. Add the rest of the oil gradually, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl and can be formed into a ball without sticking to your hands.* If you’ve added too much oil, just add flour gradually until the dough becomes less oily.
• Form about 8g balls (or use a melon baller) and place them about 1.5cm apart on a tray covered with baking paper. These cookies do not really spread so you can fit them quite snugly around each other.
• Press the peanut halves on the top for decor or use a straw to push a hole in the centre. This is the typical decoration for Asian cookies.
• Beat the egg in a bowl and use a silicon brush to cover the cookie dough in a thin layer of egg wash. This helps the cookies turn nice and golden.
• Bake cookies for between 15-17 minutes – depending on your oven. I say this because my first batch turned out too dark at 17 minutes. My second was 15 minutes and they were much nicer looking.
• Cool the cookies on a rack. Consume with a cup of coffee or tea.

Try not to inhale all these cookies in one sitting. They may be bite-sized and like Pringles, once you pop you can’t stop. These cookies will store well for about 2-3 weeks in an airtight jar or Tupperware. This will last you well into Chinese New Year!

Advertisement