Chinese New Year bakes: Sugee/Suji Cookies

Following my last post, here are the photos of the Chocolate M&M cake and chocolate M&M cupcakes that were baked for little Cheryl who loves pink and purple colours and Chocolate!

I know, I know it's a little early to start Chinese New Year baking! Seems like we have barely recovered from all the Christmas baking and cooking and now we are preparing for Chinese New Year (CNY). CNY starts on Thursday 19 February this year (extended weekend yay!) and is the year of the Sheep.

I kickstart my spring cleaning yesterday with a thorough washing of my built-in dish rack and just started the washing machine to launder one set of curtains. Hopefully the weather holds so that the curtains can hang dry quickly.

My first CNY bake is the super easy Suji/Sugee cookies. It's one of my favourites and I found out over last weekend that this is a cookie that is a favourite festive cookie among the 3 big ethnic groups in Singapore; the Chinese, the Malays and the Indians. My sis and I got to talking on Monday why we love Suji/Sugee cookies and when we were introduced to it as our Mum doesn't bake her own cookies. We concluded that we were introduced to this yummy melt-in-mouth cookie by my mum's ex-colleague, Aunty Hasnah who bakes really delicious cookies. This is the 2nd year that I'm baking these cookies. I remember having a sudden craving last CNY eve and my dear friend, D had to go all the way to Mustafa in Little India to get me a can of QBB ghee as most shops have already closed for the holidays. I baked these cookies at 9pm on CNY eve last year after reunion dinner with the family! The batch of cookies which I have baked last week is all gone over last weekend. Brought a bottle to the church gathering and my friend's little daughter was popping them so fast that we had to hide the bottle!

Suji Cookies (adapted from QBB website)
250g Ghee
500g Plain flour
150g Icing sugar
1 tsp Vanilla essence
2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt

1)Pre-heat the oven to 170 deg C
2) Melt the Ghee and leave it to cool
3) Add vanilla essence to the cooled ghee

4) Sieve plain flour, icing sugar, baking soda and salt together into a big bowl.

5) Pour the ghee into the sieved flour mixture and knead into a firm dough

6) Shaped into bite-sized balls and place them on a lined cookie tray. The dough is pretty crumbly so shape with gentle pressure.
7) Baked them for about 18-22 minutes. The cookies will be white and crumbly in texture.
8) Cool before packing into containers.

I am submitting this post to "My Treasured Recipes #5 - Chinese New Year Goodies (Jan/Feb)" hosted my Miss B of Everyone Eats Well in Flanders and co-hosted by Charmaine of Mimi Bakery House

Update 8 January: Baked another batch of the cookies for my friends today and took more pictures of the process.