Chinese Chews

To celebrate New Year’s this year, I met some friends on New Year’s day for movies and lunch. I wanted to bring a traditional New Year’s cookie (if there was such a thing) to share with everyone, so I googled “traditional New Year’s cookies”.  A lot of Chinese New Year’s Cookie recipes came up. I haven’t made Chinese New Year’s cookies before, but liked the idea so I went to Cookies by Bess to see if there was a similar recipe or any type of Chinese cookie recipe. The result…Chinese Chews and Chinese Almond Cookies.  I decided on Chinese Chews because I didn’t have any almonds on hand.  I’m glad I did, because these cookies are super yummy and my friends loved them!

I always like to compare Bess’s recipes with others, so I went back to google to search “Chinese Chews”.  I found several recipes, but only one that was somewhat like Bess’ recipe. The big difference between Grandma’s and the rest is that most of the other recipes call for coconut, Bess’s recipe does not.  I followed Grandma’s recipe this time, but I think I’ll add coconut the next time I make these…the added coconut will make them like Tom Thumb bars, but hey, everyone loves Tom Thumb bars, so why not!

I’m rating this recipe as 2-stars. It’s a simple recipe to make, but there are a couple different steps and getting the right consistency of the crust and topping proved to be challenging. I’m not sure my bars turned out as they should. I’ll definitely try this recipe again (once or twice) to see if I can get a better result.  Regardless, they tasted great and my friends loved them, so still a successful cookie!

After gathering all my ingredients and utensils together, I got started. Even though there are only two ingredients in the first step, I read the recipe a couple times just to make sure I was using the right amounts.

The crust dough was a little sticky. I would suggest flouring your hands to help with the patting of the dough into the 8×8 inch pan. There is plenty of dough, just make sure it’s evenly spread and tightly patted into the corners and sides. I patted the dough evenly versus making an edge around the sides.  Having a side “lip” might work better, I’ll try that next time.

While the crust was baking, I mixed together the topping. The recipe doesn’t specify a type of nut to use, so I chose walnuts. I thought they would work best with the flavors and type of cookie.

The recipe says to bake the crust for 15 minutes. It really didn’t seem done so I left it in for 5 more minutes. To me, it looked like it could have baked even longer. In the end, the crust was very crumbly, so stick with the 15 minutes.

Next, I poured the topping over the crust. I made sure it was evenly distributed and stuck the pan in the oven at 350 degrees.

Here is where things got a interesting. Not having made these bar/cookies before, I wasn’t sure what to do when I saw the topping bubbling like this. I touched the center of the topping to see if it had set at all. Except for the bit of crusty top, it was still very wet. I decided to let it bake for another 5 minutes to see if it would harden or set up a little more.

This is what it looked like when I took the pan out of the oven. I’m pretty sure the topping wasn’t supposed to bubble over like this. It was still loose under the crusty top, so I let the pan fully cool before I attempted to cut into bars. I was hoping it would harden up as it cooled.   At the same time, I was also worried that the bars would be difficult to remove from the pan as the sugar around the edges got hard as it cooled.

I was pleasantly surprised the bars cut easily after cooling. The sugary sides didn’t stick to the pan and the center remained soft enough that I could easily slice the bars.  Definitely use a non-stick pan when baking these bars!  Removing the bars from the baking pan worked okay, except that the crust became brittle and crumbly. The bars from the center of the pan held together the best. Those around the outsides were the most crumbled.

I ended up sprinkling the crust crumbs on top of the bars for added texture and flavor. The cookies are very sweet, which of course means they are also very tasty! As I mentioned above, I think I will add some coconut next time as it might help the topping set up better and the added coconut flavor will go really well with this cookie!

So, in the end, this cookie challenged me a bit, but also gave me some good ideas for the next time around. My friends loved the taste and loved that they were eating cookies that will bring them good “New Year luck!”

Good Luck to all of you as well in 2108!  Hopefully this year brings you all kinds of sweetness and lots of tasty cookies!

By the way, if you have a Chinese Chews recipe, please share it with me!  You can send my your recipe by clicking here…Join The Community.

Have a great week!

XXOO!

Janet

Chinese Chews

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★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

Ingredients

Crust:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup flour

Topping:

2 eggs

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white (granulated) sugar

1 cup chopped nuts

1/2 tsp vanilla

Instructions

Crust: Cream butter and flour together.  Pat in greased 8 inch sq. pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Topping: Mix all ingredients together well. Spread on baked crust. Bake 25 minutes longer at the same oven temperature.  Cut into bars when cool.

Recipe Yield

Makes 2 1/2 - 3 dozen 1x

Cookie Category:  Bar

Cookie Difficulty Rating

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