Butter Cookies / 車厘哥夫曲奇

For some reason these are branded as CNY cookies and so since CNY is coming up in a few days, it seemed like a good time to make them. My auntie in TO used to always make these for my family and they would disappear so fast that not even crumbs would be left. The cookies were so soft that they just melted in my mouth. Yummy!

I was too lazy to wait and get her recipe so I ended up searching for one on my own. Not an easy task as I realized there are many different types of butter cookies and most were not the ones that my auntie made. Finally I had a breakthrough and found this recipe which I translated into English below. For the life of me, I could not find ANY chocolate chips after going to 3 grocery stores and so I settled for mini M&Ms.

It seemed like a fairly simple recipe and it didn't take too long to make the batter. The only thing was waiting for the butter to soften up at room temperature… lucky it's rather warm these days! If you're short on time, I recommend cutting up the butter into pieces and gently heating it up over some hot water. But if you overdo it and melt it completely, just stick it in the freezer for a bit and try again!

The roadblock came when I put the batter into the piping bag and attempted to squeeze it out into pretty star shapes. I squeezed… nothing happened… not even a drop of batter came out! I squeezed harder and a tiny star shape took form. After several tries, I got a few deformed star cookies, but then I ended up putting too much pressure on the piping bag and it burst open. *sob*

In the end, I destroyed 5 piping bags, my hands were killing me and I was about to wake the neighbours with my cursing. On the last batch, I gave up on the stupid piping bag and made flat smiley face cookies which couldn't be the furthest expression on my face at that moment. Anyway after that entire ordeal, I'm pleased that the cookies did turn out as I wanted. Phew… =) 

Ingredients:
250g butter
60g icing sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
5g salt
240g plain flour
60g corn starch
Semi-sweet chocolate chips

Method:

1. Cream butter and icing sugar well.
2. Add in vanilla essence and salt and mix well.
3. Sift plain flour and corn flour together.
4. Mix flours into butter and sugar.
5. Using a piping bag and a tip, pipe out the cookie into desired shape on parchment paper. If the batter is too stiff for piping, add in a little milk at a time to a more manageable batter.
6. Top with a chocolate chip.
7. Bake at 160C/320F for 10-15 min (or until lightly brown).
8. Keep in airtight container.