Cashew Nut Cookies (腰果酥)

Happy Chinese New Year!  We had a big family lunch for the Year of the Snake today, and so I turned to a tried and true recipe for which I also happened to have all the ingredients: Cashew Nut Cookies.

This recipe is easy, and turns out deliciously light, crumbly cookies, pretty much what you might call nutty, bite-sized shortbread.  I love how they get that cracked look too, just like the store-bought ones from the Asian grocery.  They are not very sweet at all, so if you have a sweet tooth, you might want to use a bit more sugar.

Cashew nut cookies.

Cashew Nut Cookies (腰果酥)
Adapted from My Kitchen Snippets, January 2009

Makes 80 bite-sized cookies.

270g cashew nuts, roasted and salted (70g are for the garnish)
250g plain flour
60g cornflour
1/2 tsp baking powder
210g butter (or lard for a more authentic flavour)
100g sugar (could increase to 120g)
1 egg, separated (the egg white is the the glaze and could be substituted - see Q&A below)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method

1. Pick out the best-looking whole cashew nuts for the garnish.  Halve them lengthwise, where they naturally want to split.  If a nut doesn't split cleanly, try again with another nut, so you have 80 beautiful halves and maybe a few more to spare, and set aside.
2. Measure out 200g of the rest of the nuts, using up the broken bits, and either grind or finely chop them.
3. Sift flour, cornflour and baking powder into the same bowl as the ground nuts and mix.
4. In a separate large bowl, cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy.  Add in egg yolk and vanilla essence.  Mix well.
5. Stir in the dry ingredients and mix well.  Here, I get my hands dirty and turn the crumbly clumps into a dough ball.
6. Chill dough in fridge for 40 minutes.
7. Preheat oven to 180°C (or if using a fan-forced oven, 160°C).
8. Shape dough into small balls, around 2cm in diameter, and place onto lined baking tray.
9. Press a cashew nut half into each cookie ball, so that it is slightly flattened and cracks a little at the edges.
10. Beat egg white and brush onto cookies.
11. Bake 15 minutes or until golden brown.
12. Cool and store in airtight container.

What is the best way of splitting the cashew nuts in half?
What worked for me was using a thin-bladed knife (e.g. a filleting knife) and pushing the tip into the inner curve of the nut along the join line. The two halves then naturally separated.

How far apart should I place the dough balls on the baking tray?
There just needs to be a little gap between each cookie after you have flattened them with a cashew half.  These cookies basically hold their shape.

The dough balls don't need to be this far apart.  They don't spread on baking.

Should I apply the egg wash before or after I press the cashew garnish on?
While the original recipe calls for brushing the beaten egg onto the cookies before pressing on the cashew halves, I found the appearance of the cookies to be more appealing when the glaze is applied right at the end.  You could argue that the nut would stick on more firmly with egg between it and the dough, but I think the nuts will stay on anyway, especially if you make sure the egg wash runs into the crack between the cashew and the rest of the cookie.

Cookie comparison: eggwash applied before cashew (left) and eggwash applied afterwards (right).

I have too many egg yolks from some other baking.  Can I use a yolk for the glaze instead?

Yes, you can.  The original recipe calls for whole egg.  I decided to use the leftover white to reduce waste, though it produces a lighter-coloured finish.  The cookies above were actually glazed with half a yolk and one egg white beaten together.  The more yolk you have, the more golden the end result will be.  If using just yolk, you can also thin it out with a little water or milk.

Nutty About Nuts

I love nuts.  Whole walnuts, freshly removed from their shells; boiled peanuts in Chinese soup; roasted chestnuts, hot from a street seller; the delicate fragrance of cashew butter—you name them, I love them.  Recently, a workmate introduced me to a new way of eating nuts, more specifically, eating raw almonds that have been soaked in water overnight.  Their texture becomes different, kind of springy rather than crunchy, and the skins just peel away effortlessly.  They taste sweeter too, without the mildly bitter brown skin.  I bet my parents would be able to make a really nice almond milk using these soaked and peeled almonds, creating a smooth and silky drink like their cashew milk, rather than their usual gritty almond milk.  The only thing I wonder about is whether I am missing out on valuable nutrients by not eating the skins, and not drinking the slightly cloudy water that I pour away.  For the refreshing flavour and texture combination though, I can definitely recommend trying this sometimes.

Natural almonds (left) and soaked and peeled almonds (right)

On the subject of nuts, and since it is getting close to Christmas time, I was wondering why those bags of unshelled nuts contain the nuts that they do, usually walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts and hazelnuts.  (As an aside, isn't English curious, since shelled nuts are the ones with the shells removed and unshelled nuts are the ones with the shells.  Also, apparently almonds, cashews, macadamias, peanuts, pistachios and some others are not true nuts in a botanical sense—in fact, only hazelnuts in my previous list would be classified as a nut.)  You can remove the shells of roasted peanuts and pistachios fairly easily, without special implements, while macadamias are probably not included in those bags of nuts because they would break your nutcracker rather than the other way round.  But why have I never seen a cashew nut in its shell?

It turns out that cashew nuts have a toxic shell.  And though I had never heard of it before, the fruit of a cashew tree, called the cashew apple, is actually edible, with a strong smell and sweet taste.  Some people even make alcohol from it!  Whatever next?

[Added 26 January 2011:

Tried to make my own almond milk the other day, after first blanching raw almonds in just-boiled water for one minute to remove the skins.  No matter how little water I added before blending the nuts, I couldn't seem to get a strong almond flavour, even after straining out the distracting gritty pulp.  Internet researched solved the mystery for me: the intense flavour from almond essence is actually produced from the oil of bitter almonds, not the sweet almonds you normally eat.  Eating bitter almonds could kill you though, as they contain amygdalin and the enzyme emulsin, which together in the presence of water produces cyanide.  I guess that's why I've never seen bitter almonds for sale in the supermarket!
]