Tapioca Cookies

A light and melt-in-the-mouth cookie often served during all sorts of festivals in Southeast Asia. Although many have decided to buy the festive cookie from bakeries or supermarkets, the home-made ones still taste the best. The cookie-making scene is what I missed most about every Chinese New Year. Here is a low sugar version of my mum's original recipe.

Ingredients:

1. 600 gm tapioca flour, and some extra for lining purposes
2. 3 pandan leaves, roughly cut into 3-inch length pieces
3. 4 egg yolks
4. 150 gm castor sugar
5. 250 ml neat coconut milk (from 1 1/2 coconut)
6. 1 1/2 tablespoon/25gm margarine (or vegetable butter)

Preparation:

1. Heat oven to 170C.
2. Heat a clean wok or a large saucepan, and stir in the tapioca flour and the cut pandan leaves. Keep stirring the flour on low heat till it is dry and feeling light.
3. Leave flour to cool down to room temperature, and sieve into a large mixing bowl.
4. Beat egg yolk with castor sugar, till all sugar is dissolved and mixture thickens. Pour the mixture into the flour, little by little, and mix well.
5. Now pour the coconut milk, little by little again, into the flour mixture, and knead into soft dough.
6. Take a handful of the dough, roll it out to about 5mm- to 7mm-thick, and cut it into small diamond-shapes (about 2x2cm). Alternatively, you can use a dough cutter. See Versatility Note for traditional method.
7. Place shaped dough in a shallow baking tray lightly lined with some extra raw tapioca flour, and bake for about 20-30 minutes.

Versatility Note:

1. Most Asians will use a specially designed mold (looks somewhat like a fancy ice tray) to shape each biscuit (as shown in picture). To do this, sprinkle raw tapioca flour over the shaped molds, stuff and press dough into each shape, then turn it over and knock it against a strong, hard surface, to get the dough out in respective shape.
2. When placing dough in the baking tray, arrange them at least 0.5 inch from each other. This is to prevent the biscuits from joining each other and becoming one big piece, because the dough may rise and expand.
3. This is a sugar-reduced version of the original recipe. So if you really want it sweeter, increase the amount of sugar to your taste.