I made a goal for myself over the last several years to always be actively challenging the assumption and stereotype, of my own and of others’, that Chinese baking is always cheaper and inferior. Why are the ‘not-that-sweet’ Chinese buns and cakes I grew up eating not as special as a croissant or a danish? Why was I so willing to pay $7 for a slice of mille feuille but any Napoleon pastry at a Chinese bakery with a price tag over $2.50 was deemed as expensive? Why is getting an egg tart less of a treat than getting a tarte au citron? Perhaps it's because I grew up eating Chinese pastries regularly as breakfast or an after-school snack. Maybe having $1 pineapple buns with crackly tops and 75 cents steamed white sugar cake around all the time made them less special. But familiarity shouldn’t negate the skill needed to create that baked good and how good it objectively is. Just because it’s cheaper doesn’t mean it’s inferior. Perfecting the ideal egg tart takes a long time and just because it has a standard $1 price tag doesn’t mean our food is worth $6 less than something from a patisserie.
In the last 2 - 3 years, I’ve really appreciated Chinese baking a lot more and my desire to learn how to bake Chinese pastry, perfect dessert soups, and roll the perfect mochi grew immensely. Trying to recreate these things in my own kitchen made me realize how hard they actually are to execute and how much precision is needed. Today I tried to make banana mochi rolls, soft glutinous rice rolls with banana oil common at Chinese bakeries, and I failed miserably. I was use to ...
![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)
