KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 — What Chinese New Year would be complete without cookies?
This coming year will be the Year of the Wood Snake, so expect a number of snake-related or snake-adjacent festive cookies.
Look no further than Bake Creation’s Snackey Assorted Cookies Box for something both celebration appropriate as well as quirkily whimsical. (“Snackey” = Snacking and Snake, you see, which is groan-worthy, yes, but also so marvellous.)
One can relish or devour any of the wide array of cookies in this box — from Peanut Pandan Rolls and Gula Melaka Kuih Bangkit to Vanilla Snowballs and Nutty Florentines.
For some savoury notes, enjoy their Cheesy BBQ Cookies and Chicken Floss Cookies. Others might be charmed by the Toasted Coconut Cookies or more modest Chocolate Almond Cookies.
But the clincher has to be the most singular and remarkable centrepiece: a snake-shaped sugar cookie that is designed with royal icing. The friendly looking serpent even wears a traditional Chinese justice headgear!
It’s too adorable for words — but not so adorable that most wouldn’t still bite into it. Delisssss-cious, yesssss?
(Maybe something with fewer puns next.)
Joyous Bake, a bespoke cake atelier located in Bukit Jalil, is known for their minimalist cakes and dainty dessert tables laden with colourful cupcakes, madeleines and mini-doughnuts. This Chinese New Year, they are swapping out all those tiny treats for a humongous “Chinese orange”.
Don’t worry though; it isn’t a genetically modified mutant fruit but a large woven orange basket that holds all their CNY goodies.
Joyous Bake’s Joyous Chinese Orange CNY Gift Set is filled to the brim with Sea Salt Dark Chocolate Cookies, Taiwanese Pineapple Tarts, Chicken Bakwa and Snowflake Crisps — the very vision of abundance!
To make things more interesting, they have also included a large bottle of Savoury Handmade Tempeh Chips, a lovely addition that is decidedly thinking out of the box (or orange basket, as it were).
It doesn’t take an eagle-eyed patron to spot the tiny Chinese lion’s head atop Joyous Bake’s orange basket, another nice touch that is an homage to wǔshī or the traditional lion dance performances that are synonymous with Chinese New Year celebrations.
One could certainly enjoy all the lion dance troupes at their best, snaking around various obstacles while in search of mandarin oranges and angpows, while snacking on a tempeh chip or snowflake crisp!
For something with a nostalgic twist, look no further than the Snake and Ladders themed CNY Gift Box by Doughappy Bakery.
The covered gift box comes with a snake and ladder game, auspicious golden eggs, a variety of cookies — including three types of pineapple cookies: Original, Matcha and Lime — as well as other festive bric-à-brac.
The bakery, which is based in Taman Desa, has been providing freshly baked, preservatives-free breads to residents in the neighbourhood and elsewhere for half a decade now.
Besides their Snake and Ladders CNY Gift Box, Doughappy Bakery also offers their CNY butter cookies à la carte. As in years past, they will be rolling out an assortment of made-to-order cookies made with French butter and less sugar. No milk powder or preservatives are used.
Perhaps the most popular among these are the mildly bitter Belgium Chocolate Oat Cookies as well as the all-time favourite Peanut Cookies; the latter are made not with commercial peanut butter paste but from raw peanuts that they hand sifted, roasted and ground in-house.
Newer flavours of butter cookies include Royal Cheese, Lime Pineapple, Chicken Floss, Uji Matcha, Pistachio Hazelnut and Macadamia Chocolate. Those who can’t get enough of their chocolate fix might delight in their absolutely decadent Double Cocoa Butter Cookies.
Joyous Bake
IG: https://www.instagram.com/joyous.bake/
Bake Creation
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bakecreation.my/
Doughappy Bakery
IG: https://www.instagram.com/doughappybakery/
