Baking for the New Year

I started this blog 3 days ago and have only been able to work on it now. Went to Violet Oon's Cakes and Kueh's Class on Saturday. Good class with a ton of people, but at least she gave us little tart pincers to compensate for the squeeze. We did 4 recipes: ang ku kuay (see pix!), pineapple tarts, kueh bangkit and sugee cake.
So here's the sugee cake, labelled by significant other as "the World's Bestest Cake"! Of course, the fact that a whole 250 g block of Golden Churn butter and 8 eggs sit in this cake...







Also did my favourite CNY cookie recipe: Almond dainties. Modified it from 40 year old cookbook that had the baking time 5 times longer than it should be - the first time I made it, I had about a dozen "chao tar" blobs on my cookie tray. But here is the perfected recipe.

Almond Dainties (makes about 60)
250 g icing sugar (sifted)
375 g flour (sifted)
250 g ground almonds
1 1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 beaten egg yolk for glaze
coarsely chopped almonds for topping

1. mix icing sugar, ground almonds and flour
2. make a well in the center and pour in oil. Mix thoroughly
3. shape into balls about 1.5 cm diameter
4. top each ball with a little sprinkle of chopped nuts, flatten the ball slightly with the thumb and glaze top of cookie with the egg wash
5. Bake on non-stick cookie tray for 6 - 8 min at 150 deg C