BAKING PROJECT

Since we will be celebrating Hari Raya soon,  and its like a norm to have a few cookies made for the occassion, I tried making this biscuit today.  You can either choose orange or lemon for this recipe.   The drizzling of syrup after the cookies are baked,  makes this biscuit a little extra special.   Here’s the ingredients (makes about 40 to 50) :

For the cookies

For the syrup

Method :

Add the baking powder to the flour and sieve.  Stir in the lemon rind and cinnamon.  Set aside.  Mix the corn oil with the lemon juice.

In a mixer at medium speed, cream the butter and sugar.   Do not mix too long,  probably about 3 minutes.  Then add the egg yolk.  Once all is mixed thoroughly,  add the flour alternating with the liquid (corn oil and juice).  You will get a very soft dough.  Lastly add the chopped nuts.   I put the dough in the fridge for about 30 minutes to let it firm up a bit.

Preheat oven at 180C.  Remove the dough from the fridge.  Roll into small balls, and press the toasted walnuts on top (if the dough becomes too soft, put it back in the fridge).  Bake for about 25 minutes.

Once the baking time is up,  remove the cookies from the oven.  You will find that they are still soft.  Don’t worry, it will harden once cooled.

Now prepare the syrup.  Mix everything in a saucepan, and heat on medium fire, for about 10 minutes.  Stir constantly, lower the heat if it bubbles too much and watch so you don’t burn it.  Do be careful as it is very hot.  The syrup will thicken by the end of 10 minutes or so.  Remove from the heat and let it cool a bit.

Once the cookies are cooled, I start off by dipping one by one using a spoon/ fork into the syrup.   But in the end, I was too lazy and just drizzle the syrup onto the cookies.   Make sure you do it on a parchment paper to ease cleaning afterwards.   Do not put the cookies on a wire to do this, as the cookies will get stuck to the wire when the syrup cools and harden. When the syrup turns too thick, just put it on fire for a few seconds and stir till it is soft again.

The cookies turns out tasting great, good for munchies with a cup of coffee.   When storing, do make sure you put a wax paper in between the layers, as the caramel or syrup tend to glue all the cookies together.   The syrup is still soft and did not harden up, as I’d expected.   I’m not really a fan of cookies, but this one is a keeper.   Must make some for Aidilfitri