Recipe: Cute animal cashew nut cookies (CNY)

During Chinese New Year, I love munching on cookies especially pineapple tarts, kuih kapit, butter cookies as well as cashew nut cookies. I attempted pineapple tarts last year and this year, I have also bookmarked a few cookie recipes to try, including a cashew nut cookie recipe.

Cute bear cashew nut cookies

This is an easy and straightforward CNY cookie recipe. With the assistance of my little boy, we made about 75 cookies and decorated them together. Out of the many cookie cutters that I own, we chose penguin, bear and rabbit shapes for our cookie and we decided to give them "faces" as well. We had fun stamping them out and then putting eyes and mouth on each of them using chocolate chips and halved cashews. They're ridiculously cute, don't you think?

By the way, I got my cutters from Daiso - they're actually for making Japanese bentos but works just as well as cookie cutters.

Little Chef in action

Ta-dah!  My cookies are ready for the oven.

Ah Shiong 熊 , Ah Peng and Xiao Tu 小兔 wishes you Happy CNY!

As soon as the cookies came out of the oven, Baby D simply couldn't contain his excitement and kept asking if he could try one. After letting it cool down for a bit, we let him have one of each shape and we watched him as he ate it. Just look at his excited, happy face. :)

These cashew nut cookies are buttery and crumbly once cooled completely. We enjoyed some more in the evening with some green tea. The question is - will there be any left for Chinese New Year? I doubt it :P

This year, CNY falls on 31 January

Cute animal-shaped cashew nut cookies
Recipe by Baby Sumo, adapted from here
Preparation time: 40-50 minutes
Cooking time: 14-16 minutes (per batch)
Makes 75

Ingredients
185g plain flour                          
50g cornflour        
1/2 tsp baking powder      
A pinch of sea salt
1/2 egg
112g salted butter, at room temperature
112g caster sugar
25g cashew nuts, finely pounded

70g cashew nut, for decorating
150 no. milk chocolate chips, for decorating
1/2 beaten egg
1 tsp milk



1.  Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease 2 baking trays.

2.  Using an electric mixer, cream butter and caster sugar together for 5-7 minutes until light and fluffy.

3.  Add the egg and the pounded cashew nuts (25g). Mix until incorporated. Turn off the machine.

4.  Sift the plain flour, cornflour, baking powder and salt.  Fold the flour into the mixture from Step 3. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and  knead with your hands until you get a smooth dough.

Knead the dough until it becomes smooth

5.  Using a rolling pin, roll out dough into 5mm thickness and cut out desired shapes with cookie cutter. You can choose any shapes that you like - we went for penguin, bear and rabbit.

Cut desired shapes using cookie cutter

6.  Place the cookie dough onto the greased trays and decorate with cashew nuts (for the mouth) and chocolate chips (the eyes).

Decorate with chocolate chips and halved cashews

7.  Mix 1/2 beaten egg and milk to make an egg wash. Brush the cookies with egg wash.

Brushing egg wash onto the cookie

8.  Place into preheated oven and bake for  14-16 minutes, or until golden brown. Once they are out of the oven, gently lift each cookie up from the tray (it makes easy removal later). Cool and then store in airtight containers.

Simply delightful CNY cookies

Nice to look at, even nicer to eat!

Many thanks to my brother for gifting this beautiful Villeroy & Boch mini stand :) Love it!

I am submitting this post to the Bake-Along event #57: CNY cookies hosted by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours, lena of Frozen Wings and Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids. You can link your post at one of the hosts page.

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*This recipe was featured on Asian Food Channel's Facebook page on 19 January 2014.