Too Much Cookies!

Domo loved Hong Kong! :D
(sorry my Photoshop skills aren't very good yet - but as much as I love Domo, I don't think I want to be the crazy girl photographing a doll in the streets of Hong Kong)

I just came back from a much needed holiday in Hong Kong. It was too short, rushed and unplanned, but I had a great lot of fun :) I'm sure you know, Hong Kong is a food haven - serving exciting food suitable for the adventurous.

Since DOMO! is a food / baking blog, I'm not going to share much about my Hong Kong trip (but feel free to read my blog about the trip HERE in my other blog, Through My Mata Sepet). Instead, I'll show you an awesome cookie store I found....

The cookie store is called Too Much! Oh yes.. I agree. The amount of cookies and cuteness is way Too Much! It was in a shopping mall in the New Territories.  They have cookies in all sorts of shapes, flavours, colours and sizes... so tempting!

And I love their name and logo :) Adorable...

A Different Chocolate Chip Cookie!

Chocolate chip cookies are delicious, but boring.

Everyone loves chocolate chip cookies - I try to inhale as much as possible, whenever I pass by a Famous Amos cookie stand. But the thing is, it's always the same ol' thing when it comes to chocolate chip cookies. It's cookies - and chocolate chips. Once in awhile you'd get nuts (normal), or the healthy sort with raisins and oats (err...).

I'm the sort of baker that likes doing things, well... different. I've tried chocolate chip cookies with raisins, cornflakes, marshmallows, and peanut butter before. But I've had an idea in my mind for quite some time now... Snickers! ;D

Snickers would be amazing! It already has most of the stuff perfect for a chocolate chip cookie. It has chocolate of course, nuts, chewy caramel and that nougat-y fluffy thing. Snickers are my favorite candy bar :)

I was also keen on the idea of a minty flavor. Too much chocolate could be a little too rich. (In Malay, we call it jelak - which means the grossed out feeling you get  when you eat too much of something) So for half the cookie batch, I made chocolate mint cookies. What I used, was left over candy canes from Christmas.

What? Don't waste them....! They are still edible! (some have gone a little soft and chewy - but that just made it better!)

I think it went perfectly well with the chocolate chips :D

The only issue with these extra ingredients in my cookies were that the caramel from the snickers sorta melted, bubbled into a gooey substance and oozed out of the cookies. Kinda looked a little gross... The candy canes also melted in the heat, oozed out, and hardened again into a glassy pool around the cookies.

Here is my basic chocolate chip recipe:

125gm unsalted butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 3/4 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup chocolate chips

- Beat the butter, sugars and egg till light and fluffy.
- Stir in sifted flour and chocolate chips.
- Drop onto tray and bake at 180 degrees until lightly brown

For Snicker Chip cookies
- reduce chocolate chips to 1/4 cup
- chop up 2 bars of Snickers and add into dough

For Minty Cookies
- add in 1/4 cup of chopped up candy canes

If you have any more ideas of what to chop up into a chocolate chip cookie... Please SHARE! :D I always love new ideas! :D :D

A posting for

Bunny Biscuits Again...

Second batch of Suji Bunny Biscuits - this time with a different recipe (and I found out its spelled 'Suji')

This recipe is slightly crunchier, less melt in your mouth - and has the cracked effect (spoiling my bunny faces in the process). However, I still think it is incredibly yummy :)

Lots of people were freaked out by my blue/green bunnies earlier; so I made normal coloured fellas this time. White bunnies with red eyes and rounded ears :D I think 'kuaci' seeds, or pumpkin seeds look nicer as ears compared to almond nibs...

Unbaked bunnies...

 The recipe is of course, really simple... and the dough is easier to shape as it's harder.

250gm Ghee, 1 tsp Vanilla Essence, 500g Self raising flour,  150gm Icing Sugar,  A pinch of salt ,  red colouring,  Pumpkin seeds

Mix flour, icing sugar and salt together, then slowly rub in the ghee and the vanilla essence. Mix till well combined, then knead with hands till a ball of dough is formed. Take a teaspoon full of dough and shape it into a little ball. Prick two small 'eyes' with colouring and stick on two pumpkin seeds for ears. Bake at 190 degrees for about 10-12 mins. 

Looks like a rabbit play pen

The year of the rabbit is generally supposed to be a good year for all. Its a peaceful, calm and a happy year. So, I wish you a great year ahead - with prosperity, happiness and an abundance of cookies :D

Lu Kam?

Lu Kam, or Mandarin Oranges are one of those other 'must haves' during Chinese New Year.

So, heres another innovation of mine... the Chinese New Year Orange Cookie :D

It tastes like oranges too - I added in some orange juice, and plenty of orange rind. 

Does it look anything like Lu Kams?

It isn't too difficult to make, and the ingredients are rather simple. The dough is also easy to work with.

What you need is:

2 1/2 cups of All Purpose Flour

Zest of 2 oranges

3/4 cups of sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup of butter

2 tsp orange juice

2 Tbs cream cheese

orange coloring

1. Mix the flour, orange zest salt and sugar together.
2. Slowly rub in the butter till well blended
3. Drop in cream cheese and orange coloring and juice. Mix slowly. After dough looks wet enough, take it out of the mixer and knead.
4. Roll little balls about the size of one teaspoon. I use a melon baller to get roughly the same size. Finally, use a stick and poke a shallow green dot on the top of the orange ball.
5. Bake at 190 degrees, for about 12 mins. 

Enjoy your new year cookies!

Sughee Rabbit Cookies

I love my pink rabbits.. :D

A couple more weeks, starts the year of the rabbit! (which also marks the end of MY year, the year of the Tiger)

Chinese New Year always means a whole lot of Cookies!!!! But year after year I get sick of these cookies mainly because in almost every home I visit - I see the same cookies everywhere. Pineapple tarts, kuih bangkit, peanut cookies, love letters.... What to do? It's tradition....

Now I love all these cookies, but it gets boring seeing them every year. So I decided to make something different this time around....

Unveiling my Sughee Rabbit Cookies!!

Purple, pink and blue rabbits!

My Sughee Rabbits are actually Sughee Cookies... One of my absolute favorite Chinese New Year treats. Made from Ghee (goat's milk butter?) gives it the melt in the mouth texture. It's powdery and soft and impossible to stop eating once you start.

What do you call a lot of rabbits? A herd? Kinda scary when they all group together...
Looks like they could do serious damage....

To make them cuter, and a little more interesting - I added a little coloring to the dough and added eyes and 'ears' to make 'em little bunnies. Seeing that it's their year - I thought it would be nice to have a little homage for them. 

Almond nibs for ears gives the cookies just what it needs - taste and look! Apart from the rich softness of the cookies, you get a little crunch in the almonds.. and the rabbits get ears!

Last Day of Christmas TODAY!?

So Christmassy! :D

I heard on the radio today, that in medieval times - today (January 6th) would be the last day of Christmas!
I suppose that's where the 12 days of Christmas song came from...

On a semi related subject, I was digging through older photographs in my hard drive and I found some pictures I took of last year's Gingerbread cookies! :)

Mind you, my photography skills weren't too great last time :P

Santas and Christmas Trees.
The valentines heart is just practice for the coming Febuary

Don't know why that fellow right in front is so unhappy! I mean, he's the one squashing the rest! Look at the dude behind him! He's totally flattened! And don't get me started on that snowman dude....

Aaaahhh!! The HORROR!! 

Happy 12th Day of Christmas! 

My Gingerbread Men!

 

This year of course, I could not resist making Gingerbread Domos! Rawr..

And then of course, the traditional ones....

Like I said in my previous post.... I don't think Christmas is complete without the smell of gingerbread men baking in the oven. It's my third year in a row making gingerbread.... and every year they look different! I try to diversify them - keeps the kids interested! :D

I found this recipe online on Quick Free Recipes site: http://www.quickfreerecipes.com/

I loved it because the dough was as foretold by the site name, quick to make and easy as well. I liked the texture of the dough that wasn't too difficult to roll out, and not too sticky either. 

When cutting out shapes, I like making my gingerbread men thick, but I find with this recipe, thinner dough makes them crunchier. The one thing I don't like about making gingerbread is that the time it takes to decorate the men, causes the cookies to go soft :(

Of course, I tweaked the recipe a little - and added in a couple of stuff I liked. Give it a try!

Gingerbread Men Recipe

350g plain flour
100g soft butter
1-2 teaspoons grated ginger
175g soft light brown sugar
1 egg
4 tablespoons of golden syrup

1 teaspoon of All Spice

Mix all the dry ingredients first (flour, all spice, ginger and sugar) and rub in the butter. Add the egg and the golden syrup and mix with a wooden spoon until it forms a dough. This is when you use your hands to knead the dough a little. Roll out the dough - I made mine roughly 5mm thick, and cut them with your cookie cutters. Bake at 180 degrees for 10 to 15 mins. Decorate with royal icing :)

Gingerbread Girls

Gingerbread Boys

                                      Merry Christmas!

Three Little Piggies and the Chocolate Chippies!

HUGE ONES

I've been craving for munchies the whole week!

Even though I do have an open pack of Chipsmore cookies sitting on my kitchen counter, it doesn't seem to interest me - not even a little.

Since it's a PUBLIC HOLIDAY today, (~wee!) I thought homemade chocolate chip cookies would go well with the lazy holiday in the middle of the week.

Now, this is my go to recipe for chocolate chip cookies,

Chocolate Chip Cookies

125gm Butter

3/4 cups brown sugar (I usually put less- since the Chocolate chips would already be sweet)

1 3/4 cups self raising flour

1/2 cups Chocolate chips

but this time I wanted a little more.... So I added:

1 cup toasted Peanuts

1 Tbs Coffee (Ooo~ coffeeee!)

and substituted some flour for Almond Meal

I wanted to go crazy and add in all sorts of stuff ~ M&Ms, Marshmallows, Raisins, Candy Cane.... but I thought I'd cut back on the crazy sweet stuff a little.

I also could not decide if I wanted to make teeny little crunchy ones, or LARGE GIGANTIC softy ones. So of course, I did both~ :P

tiny ones

  

I don't know whats up with these guys... but they get over emotional over the arrival of cookies...

Cookieholics: "Oh You brought cookies!!! Thank You THANK YOU! I'm so grateful!!!!"