Chinese New Year Melt In Your Mouth Peanut Cookies

Woot Chinese New Year is 2moro dudes! Is everybody’s house nice and clean? Got snacks ready for the relatives dropping by? My favourite out of all the CNY snacks is the peanut cookie- buttery soft, full of peanuty goodness, just enough salt for me to keep eating and eating and who knows how much sugar 😛

Originally I was all set to follow Billy’s peanut cookie recipe except I realised just as I finished roasting my peanuts that I didn’t have any caster sugar errr crap so a quick jump onto google and I decided to try the mini sam tan kitchen recipe which used icing sugar instead and it worked fabulously! I just had issues with the baking time and also the measurement of ‘add a good glug of oil’ lol. Makes about 30 cookies so feel free to double or even triple the recipe. (Note to future self: if tripling recipe use KitchenAid to mix ingredients)

Ingredients:
200g unsalted, unroasted peanuts (+ a handful of halved peanuts for decoration)
200g plain flour
100g icing sugar (ignore my ghetto icing sugar storage)
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 egg, beaten (not shown cos i totally forgot to include in the lineup of ingredients)
Approx 150-175ml of vegetable oil

Fry or roast peanuts. I prefer frying because I can watch when the peanuts are starting to get golden; as soon as you see flecks of brown take off from heat

Blend nuts until completely pulverised

Mix all the dry ingredients together

Add 150ml of oil to the dry ingredients, stir and knead mixture. Gradually add more oil until mixture can hold it’s shape when squished and rolled into a ball. If you’ve put too much oil just add a bit of flour and give it a good stir. If you have weak arms feel free to use your mixer to combine all your ingredients.

Enlist a minion to help roll out cookies. When I first mentioned to the boy that I wanted to make peanut cookies he tells me excitedly that he got told off by his teacher in his food tech class in Year 7 because the recipe was too unhealthy ahahaha

Preheat oven to 180C. Scoop a small spoonful of mixture into your palm and roll them into small balls and place on baking tray lined with baking paper. Place a halved peanut on top of each ball, then glaze with the eggwash (beaten egg mixed with 1 Tablespoon of water). Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are nice and golden.

MAH BABIES! Yeah ignore that really golden cookie down the bottom.. he had a bit too much time in the egg wash haha I had heaps of egg leftover and it was getting late and I was like doo di doo.. let’s coat him good..

Once cool, place cookies in an air tight container. For yourself. Or others. But mainly for yourself. Gong hey fatt choy! Live long and prosper!