It’s the day before Lantern Festival, the official last day of Chinese New Year celebrations. The two weeks of Chinese New Year celebrations always come and go so quickly. There are certain activities I do every year to celebrate: watch the Chinatown parade, go to my favourite Chinese bakeries for new year cake and egg tarts, visit the Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, and bake auspicious treats to welcome the new year. There are certain recipes I always repeat like my salted egg yolk shortbread or Hong Kong-style butter cookies, but I also like to create some new cookies for my Chinese New Year cookie tins.
This year’s tin included:
Salted egg yolk shortbread
Pineapple tarts
Mandarin shortbread cookies
‘Tray of Togetherness’ cookie (recipe below)
Osmanthus butter cookies (recipe below)
The ‘Tray of Togetherness’ cookie was the particularly meaningful for me. A ‘Tray of Togetherness’ can always be found on a Chinese New Year table because of all the significance it carries. The red and gold round tray holds snacks that each have unique well wishes for the new year — candied wintermelon for good health, pistachios for happiness dried coconut for family, candied lotus root for abundance, sesame balls for laughter, and more. It’s tradition for a tray of togetherness to have six compartments to house six types of sweets, so this shortbread cookie is topped with six kinds of ingredients you would find in a tradition tray. It’s then topped with gold for an extra layer of prosperity and fortune.
The osmanthus butter cookie is a floral iteration of my favourite Hong Kong-style butter cookie recipe I make all the time. The original recipe was inspired the the cookies from popular Hong Kong bakery Jenny’s Bakery, and creates the most tender, sandy butter cookies. The butter for these cookies is first infused with osmanthus flowers, which adds a delicate and sweet floral note. I spritzed each cookie with some gold luster dust, to make them sparkle in the cookie tin.
Tray of Togetherness Cookie
Ingredients
Shortbread Cookie
- 113 g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 55 g (1/2 cup) icing sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 120 g (1 cup) all-purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
Vanilla Icing
- 2 egg whites
- 300 g (2 1/2 cups) icing sugar
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Toppings
- candied wintermelon
- candied lotus root
- candied lotus seeds
- hawflakes
- roasted pistachios
- candied coconut
Instructions
Shortbread Cookie
- In a bowl of stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar until smooth. Add vanilla and combine.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, earl grey tea and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix on low speed until just combined
- Roll out dough between two pieces of parchment paper to 1/4 inch in thickness. If dough is too soft as this point (sticks to parchment), transfer to fridge to chill for 15 min
- Using a large round cookie cutter, stamp out cut-outs and transfer to baking sheet, allowing 1-inch between each cookie. Using a smaller round cutter, punch out the centre of each cookie. Gather any scraps of dough and re-roll until all dough is used up
- Bake until edges are golden brown, about 10-12 min. Smaller cookies will need less time (check at 8-9min). Allow cookies to cool before decorating
Vanilla Icing & Decorating
- In the bowl of a stand mixer or large mixing bowl, beat egg whites on medium-low speed until frothy, about 1 min. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add icing sugar and vanilla. Mix until smooth. Icing should have the consistency of honey. If icing is too thick, add more water, 1 tsp at a time.
- Dip the tops of cookie into the glaze one at a time, letting the excess drip off. Transfer to a wire rack and decorate as with toppings of choice
Osmanthus Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 140 g salted butter
- 3 tbsp dried osmanthus flowers
- 45 g icing sugar
- 115 g all-purpose flour
- 40 g cornstarch
Instructions
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a small pot combine, melt butter and bring to a light simmer. Remove from pot from heat and stir in dried osmanthus flowers. Allow flowers to steep for at least 15 minutes.
- In a medium bowl, combine melted osmanthus with icing sugar. Stir with a rubber spatula until smooth.
- In a small bowl, whisk together flour and cornstarch.
- Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Stir until smooth.
- Transfer the dough into a piping bag fitted with a large open star tip (I used wilton 2d). Apply pressure to pipe the dough onto the prepared baking sheet. If you are having trouble piping out the dough, you can warm up the dough in the piping bag between the palms of your hands, or add an extra 1 tbsp of melted butter to the dough and refill the piping bag. Leave 1 inch between each cookie.
- Transfer the sheet of piped cookies to the freezer while you preheat the oven to 325F. Chilling the dough will prevent the cookies from spreading in the oven.
- Bake the cookies until the bottoms are golden, about 25 – 30 minutes
- Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Reader Interactions
![day two: sparkly matcha neapolitan shortbread cookies ✨
the instructions might seem confusing, but if you watch the video to see how the different flavour layers are stacked, it will make much more sense! these slice and bake cookies freeze extremely well so you can make the dough now and bake them off when you want to gift them. (makes 40-44)
vanilla dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
matcha dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tsp culinary matcha powder
1/4 tsp salt
strawberry dough
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g 6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tbsp freeze-dried strawberry powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg white
coarse sanding sugar
for the vanilla dough, combine butter and powdered sugar in a bowl. mix until smooth. add vanilla. add flour and salt and mix until no dry streaks remain. do the same for the matcha and strawberry doughs in separate bowls
place one portion of the dough between two pieces of parchment paper and roll into a 5 x 9-inch rectangle that is about 1/4-inch thick. slide rolled out dough onto a baking sheet and freeze for 10 min until firm. repeat this step with the other portions of dough
remove the top piece of parchment from each slab and stack the strawberry, vanilla, and matcha dough layers. cut the slab down the middle the long way to form two 2.5 x 9-inch rectangles. with one half, carefully swap the order of the layers (example: if the first half of the dough is stacked svm, swap the second half so it’s msv. this will ensure that same flavour squares don’t stack on each other). stack the halves. press the layers gently to adhere them. return the stacked dough to the freezer for another 10min
[recipe cont’d in comments]
#christmasbaking #christmascookies #holidaybaking #holidaycookies #cookiedecorating](https://constellationinspiration.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
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