Melting Moments

Chinese New Year is just nine days away and all the children are looking forward to it as they will be receiving lots of 'ang pows' (money in red packets) and lots of cookies to eat!  What about the adults?  They would groan and start balancing their bank account because this means expenditure is going to be extremely high this time of the year!  Well, this is truly unavoidable and we might as well just join in the fun with the kids..waakaakaa.

As part of the Chinese custom, a 'gift' in a form of hamper or maybe a bottle of cookie with some mandarin oranges or peanut or dried mushroom or a packet of chinese sausage or 'ling guo' (sticky glutinous rice cake) and the list goes on, will be given to family and close relatives and close friends.  Each year, we will do up a hamper with a combination of a few food items for my children ex-nanny and her family.  We are very close to them.  They adore my children and treat them just like their own grand-children.  They spoil them to bits!

This year, we decided to get something different for them.  Saw this beautiful Chinese Tea-Set and couldn't resist buying this. I packed it with some artificial cherry blossom and wrapped it into a hamper.  Apart from this, will be adding some food stuff and cookies to this little gift.   Hope they will like this!

 Ok, now that's done, I managed to squeeze some time to make 2 types of cookies today.  One is the Chocolate Chip Cookies, which is the same one I did for Christmas and the other is Melting Moments.  This recipe is great as it literally melts in the mouth.

Here's the recipe:

1/3 cup corn flour
2 1/2 cup self-raising flour
3/4 cup icing sugar
1 egg
155g melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
(the next time I bake these, I shall add 1tsp of lemon flavor with a little lemon rind, just for taste)

Pre-heat oven to 140d celsius.
1. Combine the corn flour, self-raising flour and icing sugar.  Mix and pour half of the flour into another bowl, and add in egg, vanilla and melted butter.  Beat for 2-3 mins.
2. Add the other half of the flour mixture into the butter mixture and knead to form a soft but pliable dough.
3. Shape it into a ball and place on a baking tray line with parchment paper.  Using a fork press down the dough and form the little 'square' indentation on it.
4. Bake till done.