Chestnut Cookies

When I saw this cookie on Jennifurla's , I was totally smitten. Chestnut!!! How creative this is.
And with 2 packs of chestnuts that I have, I just can’t give this recipe a miss.

The recipe is adapted from a Russian tea cake/Mexican wedding cake recipe, something similar to our local Kuih Makmur, a popular Raya cookie. So, if you love chestnuts and those said cookies, you shouldn’t not try this.It's not difficult to make, provided if don't need to peel ur own chestnuts.
It dense (not fluffy) due to the moist finely milled chestnuts, but melts in the mouth, plus, it’s wonderfully fragrant with chestnuts.

But one confession to make, Lyanne’s saliva is present in this cookie. When I went to Jusco few days back to do my weekly grocery shopping, Anchor butter was on sale, so I took 6 blocks. While queuing to pay money, Lyanne grabbed a block of butter, unwrapped it and started licking the butter. Lydia screamed ,"Mommy, SEEEEE!!" Lyanne was happily savouring that unfortunate block of butter. I quickly removed it from her, placed the wrapper back on and proceeded to queue. Lyanne screamed at me, asking for that butter back. LOL. It was a funny and ugly sight. Kid screaming for butter at the supermarket, I'm still laughing now.

My kids love butter as much as I do. It’s in the genes. So, when I wanted to make this cookie, I used up the contaminated block first. Anyway, that’s kid’s saliva and it’s baked, so, whatever that might be in there, is already killed. It’s safe! LOL.

All that I got from the recipe, 130 pieces of cookies in raw form

Chestnut Cookies
Loosely adapted  from Smitten Kitchen
Yields: 130pcs smallish cookies the size of a small fishball.

225gm butter, softened
50gm icing sugar
225gm roasted chestnuts (I used packaged roasted chestnuts, pics seen at the bottom of this post, I ate a few, which was why I was left with 225gm)
250gm +50gm cake flour
Icing sugar for coating (won’t need much, but it depends on your coating technique :p)

1. Mill package chestnuts until fine. Mix with 250gm cake flour.
2. Mix butter and icing sugar with a large spoon. No need to beat til fluffy, just mix to combine.
3. Pour half of the chestnut flour into butter mixture and mix. Add in the balance.
4. If dough is too wet and soft, adjust with the 50gm of flour, you may not add all. Some chestnuts are drier and some are wetter.
5. Form small balls of dough, as big as a small fishball, or the size of a small lime.
6. Preheat oven to 180(fan)/200C
7. Arrange on baking pan (1 inch space is enough) and bake for 12 minutes. If your cookies are larger, please extend the time.
8. Place ½ cup icing sugar in a small basin, if icing sugar is clumpy, run it in the mill for a few seconds.
9. When cookies are done, remove from oven. While they are still hot, coat with icing sugar by putting a few of the hot cookies into the icing sugar(8) and move the basin with a sifiting motion to coat. Place sugared cookies back on to tray and let it cool and coat the rest of the cookies in the same way.

in its baked form and the difference of being bare and made up with "powder"

that's the size of my cookie by comparison

I hated the wind when I took these pictures. Blew away all the nice "make up"

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #3: My Favorite CNY Cookie (Jan 2011)