Sunday, January 16, 2011

Aspiring Bakers #3: Melt-in-mouth German Cookies 德式酥饼

Besides the usual pineapple tarts and cashew nuts cookies, which I will be baking in the next 2 weeks, I decide to try out this German Cookies which is very popular in the Chinese baking blogs.


Before I start praising about how good these cookies are, let me ask you:

How many blogs are you following?

I think I'm following at least 100 blogs, which I do read regularly and leave comments.
Not counting those blogs which I glimpse through, without commenting and do not read each and every post. I will try to finish my daily blog reading in an hour, so I hardly leave comments. Sorry to my friends out there.

Another reason is I'm pretty bad at words and sometimes, even though I feel like commenting, I don't really know what to type. I will most probably be very repetitive. "Looks great!" "Very pretty!" "Must be very delicious!" That's all I can come up with. ;) But I really mean it. I'm just bad at words.

I also have another habit when I read through baking blogs. Sometimes I can get very interested in a particular blog, usually those which I have followed for some time but not from the beginning. I will take a few weeks to read the blog starting right from the very first post and all the comments. It takes up a lot of time but I enjoy it. It's a good way to know about the person behind the blog. And you can also see the improvement in baking, photo-taking and sometimes a change in writing style. I don't know how many of you actually do this!

I'm going to do something special here. I'm introducing you a blog which I have been recently reading through.

Min's Blog
A Chinese baking blog from Malaysia. Sometimes, you can find her recipes in English.
Her blog was initially a very personal one. Later, she starts to write about her passion like baking, cooking, gardening and travelling. I like her writing style, her photos and the food she has made. Remember to drop by her blog. I will introduce more blogs if I do find one that is worth recommending. :)

Min, 如果你有读到这一段,我是花了几个星期的时间,从头到尾把你的部落格读了一遍。虽然很少留言,你可能没留意到我。但是我觉得应该介绍你给大家。希望你有越来越多读者和支持者!


Coming back to my new year bake. This 德式酥饼 was first read from Min's blog. When I read it again from Cook.Bake.Love, I decided to get a pack of potato starch to give it a try. I did an experiment using different amount of flour. The recipe from Min's blog uses less flour and the dough is very sticky and difficult to roll. The recipe from Cook.Bake.Love uses more flour and easy to handle. After baking, there is not much difference in taste. Both are melt-in-mouth kind and very buttery fragrant using SCS butter. If you have the time, try this out!

Potato starch

Melt-in-mouth German Cookies 德式酥饼

Ingredients (makes 60 pieces)

125g butter
40g icing sugar, sifted
125g potato starch
80g superfine flour (I use plain flour, tried out both 50g and 80g, both good)

Method

1. Beat butter and icing sugar till fluffy and lighter in colour.

2. Sift in potato starch and flour, mix to form a soft dough.

3. Roll into small balls (about 2cm in diameter), arrange on lined baking pan and press lightly with a fork (dip the fork in water after each press to prevent cookie dough from sticking to the fork).

4. Bake in preheated oven at 170 deg C for 15 mins, upper rack (need not bake till cookies turn brown).

Recipe adapted from: Min's blog and Cook.Bake.Love

I am submitting this cookie to Aspiring Bakers #3: My Favourite CNY Cookie (Jan 2011), hosted by j3ss kitch3n.