Last year, I made mooncake piglets in its full form and shape as gifts for my family and friends. This year, I’m trying something that’s similar yet a little bit different – mooncake piglet cookies. These are flatter in shape and do not have white lotus paste, resembling those that are sold in colourful baskets at the local neighbourhood bakeries.
Crunch! Crunch! Oink! Oink!
Ingredients:
- Golden syrup: 360g
- Alkaline water: 12g (about 3/4 tsp)
- Peanut oil: 180g
- Hong Kong flour: 600g + extra for dusting the moulds
- Red beans: 60 pieces, washed and dried
- Glaze: 1 tbsp melted butter + 1/2 tbsp honey
Method:
- Combine syrup, alkaline water and oil. Mix well.
- Sift flour into a mixing bowl. Make a hole in the center of flour, then pour in syrup mixture.
- Mix everything into a soft dough. Cover with damp cloth and leave to rest for 20 min.
- Preheat oven at 180 degrees.
- Lightly dust the moulds with flour so that the dough can be removed from them easily.
- Press enough dough into the moulds to form the piglets.
- Dislodge by hitting the moulds gently on a hard surface.
- Place 1cm apart on greased baking tray.
- Gently press 2 red beans into each dough to form the eyes.
- Bake for 12 min. Remove and leave to cool for 10 min.
- Brush pig with glaze. Return to oven to bake for another 10 min.
- Leave piglets to cool before decorating them with colourful ribbons.
Tricks:
- Do not glaze pigs with yellow colouring/egg yolk as the browning will become uneven.
- If you cannot find Hong Kong flour where you are, substitute it with plain flour to bake equally tasty (perhaps slightly harder) piglet cookies.
Serving:
Makes 30 – 35 piglet cookies (depending on mould sizes)