Search Results for: perfect cookie box

Ritz White Chocolate Cookies

These ritz cracker white chocolate cookies have been on my mind for the last little while (because I've tested it a gazillion times and if there's a world shortage of ritz cracker, I am the culprit) and clearly it has been on yours as well. I shared that I was working on this ritz cracker cookie a few months back and it's perhaps the most requested recipe I've had in a while. This cookie is for the cookie lovers, but specifically the white chocolate lovers (me), the ritz cracker lovers (me), and the sweet and salty lovers (also me). What I'm trying to say is that even though this cookie might seem like it's all about me, it's for you as much as it's for me.

The cookies are a perfect combination of sweet and salty, chewy and crispy. The base of the cookie is a brown sugar cookie, like with my classic chocolate chip cookie recipe, but with the flour, we add blitz up Ritz cracker, just enough for you to notice that it's not just a normal cookie recipe, but not so much that you might as well eat the cracker itself. The reason why it took so long to figure out this recipe is because I had to play around with the flour to ritz cracker to butter ratio to make sure it was consistent with each batch and that each batch would have the right spread. The first go at this cookie was quite an unfortunate (though delicious) mess — if you ever wonder if you can just replace flour with equal amount of Ritz cracker, the answer is: you cannot. There is too much fat in the cracker and it doesn't hydrate the same way as regular flour. You end up with a puddle of a cookie and a ...

Cookie Butter Lucky Charms Cookies

Every year around this time of year, I buy my annual box of Lucky Charms cereal to make my Lucky Charms Cereal Marshmallow Cookies. These cereal cookies have been one of the most popular recipe on blog in the past two years and I get so happy when you tag me in all your beautiful cookie photos. What makes the cookies so special is the use of cereal 'flour' (blitz cereal) along with regular flour which makes the cookie taste exactly like... cereal?

I took the idea from those cookies to make these ones, which is a very good follow-up to the original cereal cookie. From the original cookie, we swap out the chewy sugar cookie base and use a brown sugar cookie base much like a classic chocolate chip cookie instead. Of course we have to keep the cereal marshmallows because they make any cookie more fun. Additionally, we're swirling in ribbons of cookie butter, which adds another layer of flavour and keeps the cookies extra chewy. Always top you cookies with flaky salt, and I went the extra mile for these ones and added a spritz of edible glitter as well.

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Guide to Baking Supplies Shopping in Hong Kong (Cookie Cutters, Mooncake Presses, and more)

One of my favourite thing about shopping in Hong Kong is how stores that sell similar items are grouped together in the same neighbourhood. There's a street dedicated to electronics, one for sneakers, a street for antiques, and one specifically for pet goldfish. Luckily for me, there was a street dedicated to all things bakeware and kitchen tools. Shanghai Street in Yau Ma Tei is home to stores selling traditional wooden mooncake molds, cake decorating supplies, and cookie cutters of all shapes and sizes. I went into almost every single kitchen store on Shanghai Street and here are my favourites:

Man Kee Chopping Board 萬記砧板 (340, 342 Shanghai St.)

Man Kee is one of the few stores left in Hong Kong that specializes in custom chopping boards and other wood-based kitchen tools. This store was at the top of my list because they're also known for their wide selection of wooden and plastic mooncake molds and presses. Upon reaching the storefront, you will see an impressive display of wooden mooncake molds. I spent quite a while admiring all the different patterns and designs before even stepping into the store. Each mold is priced differently and the more detailed the mold, the higher the price. I love the look of wooden molds but prefer plastic plunger style presses for practicality. The selection of plastic mooncake presses was as impressive as the wooden ones, with over 20 - 30 designs and sizes ranging from 50g - 125g. The smaller presses were around $38 HKD (~ $6.50 CAD) and the larger molds with multiple, interchangeable design plates were priced ...

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 2022 (All Recipes)

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, twelve new Christmas recipes. Well... these aren't exactly new. I shared these recipes as part of my 12 Days of Christmas Cookies series last year on Instagram and TikTok but realized I never shared the recipes here! So here is the full list from last year all in one post so you can easily choose which cookie (or cookies) are best for your holiday cookie tin. Spoiler alert: the matcha wreaths and the matcha checkerboard cookies won the popularity contest last year.

Day 1: Matcha Wreath Cookies

This was one of your favourite recipes from last year’s 12 days of Christmas cookie series and it was mine as well. I love how versatile this dough is and I make it all year round in a variety of shapes. I usually pipe them out as little flowers with a large open star tip but during the holidays, they become wreaths or Christmas trees. The key is to use the best butter you can find! I always save all my “good butter” for this recipe. It is important to use very soft butter for the recipe (softer than room temperature), it's okay even if a portion of the butter is melted. This will allow the dough to be piped easily. If you are still having issues with the dough coming out smoothly from the piping bag, add a tablespoon of melted butter to the dough will do the trick. After the dough has been piped, freezing the cookie wreaths before baking will help them retain their shape.

113g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, very soft**
36g (5 tbsp) icing sugar
96g (3/4 cup + 1 tbsp) all-purpose ...

Peppermint Bark Thumbprint Cookies

Every year around mid to late November little holiday signifiers start popping up — peppermint mochas start appearing on café menus, Christmas music start making its way into stores at the mall, and the iconic tins of peppermint bark make their annual appearance at my local Williams Sonoma store. William Sonoma’s peppermint bark is at the top of that list for me. When I walk into the Vancouver location of Williams Sonoma and see the pyramid of red and white tins, my heart sings. It is full on singing — not just a subtle little melody, but a complete orchestra. That’s when I know that the holidays are here.

I’ve always enjoyed the peppermint bark as is but never have I used it as part of my holiday baking. I don’t know why I haven’t incorporated into my holiday cookies because it seems like a natural fit. When Williams Sonoma Canada asked if I wanted to make a cookie inspired by their iconic bark, I immediately said yes (I said a polite yes in my email exchange with them but in my head, there were 10 exclamation marks following a YES in all caps). In addition to using the peppermint bark for my holiday cookies, I also used the tin as the cookie box, making it so perfect to gift to family and friends.

I also picked out a few things from their holiday shop, including these cute Williams Sonoma Peanuts™ Holiday Impression Cookie Cutters set (since all of you are obsessed with my last set of Peanuts cookie stamps) as well as the PEANUTS™ Holiday Platter.

(PS. Williams Sonoma Canada's shipping cut-off to receive items in time for Christmas Day ...

Caramel Popcorn Cookies (from Pastry Love by Joanne Chang)

My favourite season of the year is cookbook season. It falls somewhere between Fall and Winter and it is the time when many highly-anticipated cookbooks are released. I had barely finished flipping through Michelle's new book when my copy of Pastry Love by Joanne Chang arrived in my mailbox. I own and love Joanne's other cookbooks so I knew Pastry Love would be another great one to add to the collection. In case you are not familiar with Joanne, she is known more formally as the owner of Flour Bakery and James Beard Foundation Award winner for Outstanding Baker, and less formally as the queen of sticky buns. What makes this book so special is that it features recipes for many things she could not serve in the setting of a bakery, but still delicious recipes nonetheless.

When flipping through this book that is divided into chapters like 'I Knead Bread,' 'Easy as Pie,' 'Time to Show Off,' and 'I Made This for You,' I gravitated towards a recipe that is simpler but just as eye-catching as the rest. Jessi's Caramel Popcorn Cookie recipe in the 'Afternoon Pick-Me-Up' chapter produces a cookie is equally crispy, chewy, sweet, salty, and everything you would ever want in a cookie. The amount of caramel popcorn you add to this cookie dough is a-l-a-r-m-i-n-g. It calls for six full cups of popcorn and I thought I misread the recipe and that my mixer would spew it all back out at me. When it was time to add the caramel corn, I had the mixer on the lowest setting possible (this is key!) and added the six ...

Shortbread Ice Cream

Shortbread is and will always be my favourite cookie, my cookie of choice, my "if you could only eat one type of cookie for the rest of you life, what would it be?" type of cookie. When I want a shortbread cookie, I want it in it's purest form — a plain shortbread cookie, vanilla-scented is fine, but I definitely don't need a jammy centre of a chocolate drizzle. I don't need any nuts or fruit pieces. I want to taste just the butter (good quality butter, of course) and allow the sandy cookie to melt in my mouth, without any distractions. I grew up eating Walker's Shortbread with my mom (she always kept a box of it tucked inside a drawer in her room) and to me, having a rectangular piece of shortbread with fork marks pierced throughout will always bring equal amounts of joy and nostalgia.

For this ice cream sandwich, I really wanted to capture everything I love about shortbread in ice cream form. The ice cream should be rich and buttery. It should be so smooth like when a perfectly sandy shortbread melts on your tongue. And of course, it should have a shortbread crust to tie everything together.

This little part is for the recipe developers out there who are interested in the process of getting to this final recipe. My original thought was to create a shortbread-infused cream for the creme anglaise — an overnight, cold steep of shortbread cookies and heavy cream. But the cream couldn't get into the centre of the shortbread cookies, and in turn the flavour of shortbread didn't get extract into the dairy. Instead, the shortbread cookies are blended into ...

Sweet Corn Ice Cream Sandwich

Ice cream sandwich summer continues and we've made it to the second ice cream sandwich (second on the blog, but fifth in this year's hyperfixation with ice cream sandwiches), which happens to be a flavour I've been thinking about for a long time. Corn is one of my favourite foods and to be honest, I was low key jealous of Corn Kid's rise to fame because I'm quite confident that my love and passion for corn is greater than his. Jealousy and pettiness aside, corn ice cream is the flavour that really sums up peak summer and takes everything wonderful about summer sweet corn and packages it into a creamy dessert. I've had my fair share of corn ice cream but it is never a flavour I can reliably count on ice cream shops to carry each year. I will always order Earnest Ice Cream's sweet corn and blueberry swirl when it's in their scoop shop, and I still catch myself thinking about Rain or Shine's corn ice cream with black pepper (which they told me was one of their worst sellers... which really makes me question my taste). Rarely will I find corn ice cream. Just pure corn ice cream without the distractions of any swirls or mix-ins. That's truly what I want. And this is what that is.

Corn has a such a clean and delicate flavour and that is what I wanted to shine with this ice cream. To really get as much corn flavour as I could into this ice cream, corn is incorporated in two ways — once the kernels were removed from the corn, the cob was steeped in the cream. Then the kernels are cooked in cream before they're blended into the ice cream base. The first few iterations ...

Home Sweet Hong Kong

Hong Kong is my home away from home, a travel destination that is less about having a jam-packed itinerary but reconnecting with people and places that I've missed since my last visit. It has been almost eight years since the last time I was in Hong Kong, which is the longest I've ever been away from the city. It is rare for me to not over-plan for a trip, especially a ten day one, but I knew this trip is more about having dim sum and with relatives to catch up on the last few years. I still managed to visit a few of the cafes and bakeries on my list. I ate at my grandma's home for almost my entire stay there and those were some of the best meals of my trip.

Here are some highlights from my 10 days in the city (in the order I visited them and presented in the photos below):

Food & Coffee

Elixir - my first coffee in the city was at Elixir, a very clean and sleek coffee shop in Central. Most of the coffee shops I visited are in Central and Sheung Wan (both of which have their own MTR metro stops and are in close walking distance to each other) and walking between the two neighbourhoods allowed to discover many more cafes along the way. Despite its mostly concrete interior and exterior, Elixir was actually quite a welcoming space and great spot to rest and enjoy a coffee after hours of exploration in Central. I ordered something that I normally wouldn't order, the osmanthus cold brew + tonic, and really enjoyed it. The osmanthus was perfectly fragrant and the floral notes held up really well against the coffee. It was so refreshing after spending ...

Jelly Mooncakes

I am deep into mooncake making and we're in the final stretch before the big day. Mid-Autumn Festival is in five days (umm why does time go by so quickly) and I feel like I'm running out of time to share all the mooncakes I've been making this season. My mooncake world has been an exciting one this year:

Cherry Bombe invited me to be a guest on their baking podcast, She's My Cherry Pie, and I got to geek out about all things mooncakes with the wonderful Jessie Sheehan. You can listen to it here!I got a bunch of new mooncake presses and molds this year (like this snoopy one) and my collection is growing at an exponential rateI started playing with coloured mooncake dough (natural powders like matcha and strawberry as well as gel food colouring) and I'm surprised I haven't done it sooner? I'm so proud of these apple tree mooncakes even though I was so close to having a meltdown while making the tiiiiiny applesI made blue skies jelly mooncakes and they quickly became the most popular mooncakes I've shared this year

I've been sharing all types of mooncakes the last few years but a jelly mooncake being the most popular mooncake wasn't something I would've predicted to be on my 2023 Mid-Autumn bingo card. I've made jelly mooncakes here and there for fun but it was never something I've taken as seriously as perfecting my sablé cookie crust on my baked mooncakes. Jelly mooncakes are far from traditional, but a fun option for Mid-Autumn.

I made two jelly mooncakes this year — a green apple-flavoured jelly mooncake that's light blue with little coconut milk ...

Mooncake Molds & Presses

Compared to cookie making and cake decorating, mooncake making is relatively new to me. Despite it being a hobby of only a few years, my growing collection of mooncake tools and equipment would make one think I've been making mooncakes for at least a decade. There isn't a huge variety of mooncake molds and presses out there, but enough for it to maybe appear intimidating to newer mooncake makers.

Types of mooncake presses

There are generally two types of mooncake presses: wooden and plastic. Wooden mooncake molds are like paddles. The mooncakes are shaped into a floured mold and for the mooncake to be released, the paddle is hit against a hard surface like a table or countertop. I love the look of wooden mooncake molds, but they are less practical and a bit harder to use than newer plastic mooncake presses.

Plastic mooncake presses are my preferred mooncake shaper. Mooncake presses have a spring and plunger system, where the mooncake dough is inserted into the press and with some pressure against the table, the design will be imprinted onto the top of each mooncake. Because it has a plunger, the mooncake is released very easily. Most plastic mooncake presses come with a variety of interchangeable design plates that can be swapped and locked into the press to create a variety of mooncake patterns. The plastic is usually cream coloured but I've started seeing clear plastic presses which allows you to see the imprint being made — it's quite pretty!

Different sizes of mooncake presses

Mooncake molds come in variety of sizes but the most ...

Hanami Cherry Blossom Picnic 🌸

Cherry blossom season is in full bloom here and I can't think of a more beautiful time of the year. The soft pink petals flutter in the wind and everything looks so effortlessly romantic. Having a hanami (Japanese for "flower viewing") picnic under the cherry blossom trees has not become an annual tradition yet, but I'm making more of an effort to make bento boxes filled with springtime sweets and sakura snacks for enjoying under the blossoms. People in Japan take their hanami bentos very seriously but for my first all-homemade bento, I thought I would start with something for manageable and least likely to cause any mental breakdowns. I've only had one and a half breakdowns so far.

The first thing I had to do was get a bento box! I knew I wanted a multi-layer one but didn't expect to find most perfect four-tiered Rilakkuma box at the mall. It has three deep compartments and one shallow one, which was perfect for small sweets and cookies. It also came with matching utensils. I can't find the exact one I used but these San-X or pastel-coloured lunch boxes would be just as cute. After finding the box, it was time to design the menu:

First savoury layer: sakura onigiri Second savoury layer: sakura inari sausage octopusThird sweet layer: hanami dangoFinal sweet later: assorted butter cookies 🌸 Creating the first layer: sakura onigiri

One of my favourite snacks of all time: onigiri. Onigiri are Japanese rice balls made of steamed rice that have been compressed into a rounded triangular shape that are usually wrapped in a nori seaweed sheet. I ...

Salted Egg Yolk Pineapple Cakes

If you're not familiar with Taiwanese pineapple cake (鳳梨酥), which is drastically different than pineapple upside down cake or any pineapple cake outside of Asia, it's a bite-sized pastry of a jammy pineapple filling with a tender short crust. Taiwanese pineapple cakes fall somewhere between a filled cookie and a small pie, and is not what we commonly think of as ‘cake.’ Traditionally, the outer pastry of a traditional pineapple cake is made of lard, and the filling is mostly made of pineapple mixed with winter melon, but it's more common now to have a pure pineapple filling. They're often baked in square molds but you might also find some shaped with more decorative molds.

I grew up eating taiwanese pineapple cake — these square-shaped pastries were often my after school snack or my mom would include two of them in my lunch box. The ones I ate came in a see-through plastic sleeve but in recent years I’ve branched out and tried other versions of Taiwanese pineapple cake. My favourite version of pineapple cake now is a pineapple mooncake! Specifically a pineapple mooncake with the traditional salted egg yolk centre. My family always buy these salted egg yolk pineapple mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival and they're always the one I go for first (sorry lotus paste!!!). After eating them for years, I decided it's finally time I create my version of the pineapple mooncake.

I've shared Kristina's pineapple cake recipe on the blog before in celebration of the release of her amazing cookbook, Mooncakes and Milk Bread, and the recipe makes a more ...

Search Results for: perfect cookie box

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