Cinnamon Mooncake Cookies (Holiday Recap)

After a luxuriously long holiday break with the fam, I'm back to blogging! I didn't do as much baking this year, opting instead for rest (after a long virus--yuck!) and spending time with my in-laws and kiddos. 

One recipe my daughter and I did try this year was Cinnamon Buddha Cookies (seen here at Spoon and Chair) using the mooncake molds my husband brought back from China earlier this year.






Spoon and Chair's recipe (which is based on Dorie Greenspan's Sweet Tart Dough Recipe) calls for Mooncake cookie molds, not mooncake molds--which I think are deeper--but we improvised and used the smaller of my mooncake molds (approx. 3 in. in height). They worked out just fine.

The dough is a breeze to make. The recipe calls for mixing flour, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and then butter and 1 egg yolk in a food processor (see recipe for exact measurements). 

This is then chilled in the fridge for two or more hours. We'll probably reduce the chill time next time we make these; two hours of chilling made for a pretty tough dough. We really had to work it into the mold with our fingers. We then used a knife to scrape off the extra dough in the mold (to make cookie prettier!). 

 Making these cookies is a great way to relieve holiday stress. The recipe notes that you have to "whack" the molds against the counter to pop the cookies out.  With our molds, "whack" was an understatement. We had to "ka-whack" the dang things for the cookies to pop out.  We followed Carolyn Phillips' suggestion at Out to Lunch with @MadameHuang to flour the molds each time before adding new dough. Without the flour, we would have had to literally dig the dough out with our fingers.  

Mooncake cookies are a great all-around cookie for holidays---Christmas, New Years, and Chinese New Year (which is next on our family holiday countdown. Put it on your calendar: February 10!). They taste wonderful--like slightly sweet, cinnamon-y shortbread. Plus, when they're baking, the cookies make your house smell like Christmas, due to their 3 tsp of cinnamon.  And did I mention how pretty these cookies are? 

Bakers note: We followed the recipe's instructions and baked for 20 min. Our oven might be too hot, but this left the cookies a little overdone. We'll reduce baking time next go around. Also, with our molds, the recipe only made eleven cookies--which means that they disappeared in a matter of hours. They are that good. 

Keeping in Touch: Thank you Steve Jobs!

Yesterday we witnessed our own small Christmas miracle when we video chatted (through FaceTime) with my husband's family in China.  Small potatoes?  Not to us.

We've tried to video chat with my mother-in-law and her family since before my son was born--three years--with no success. We've tried AOL, Skype, and AIM, Chinese computers and computers purchased in the United States, but each time faced a breakdown of technology, insurmountable user error, or just plain bad luck:  no internet connection.

Enter the iPad.  When my mother-in-law visited this year we gave her a refurbished iPad. To my surprise, she was sending email and chatting with her relatives in Germany via FaceTime within two hours of receiving the gift.  Soon after, she returned to China, and we tried to video chat, but could not connect due to a poor internet connection.  Sigh.

I thought all was lost until yesterday morning when we were able to connect for the first time with my mother-in-law, her sister, and her sister's family.  Yeah!  We had not seen many of these people for more than two years. Children had grown, and elders had aged.  We spoke Chinese and English, and laughed with each other.

I have big hopes for this little piece of technology in 2012. I hope that it will help my kids stay connected with their Nainai for as long as she stays in China, and that it will help them build relationships with their other Chinese family members who we only see every three years.  Little piece of technology...big hopes!

Merry Christmas!

(This is not a shameless promo for Apple or any of their products, but an honest-to-goodness story of how the iPad helped a family in the United States connect with their relatives in China on Christmas Day.)

These gifts=my love for you

One of many cultural (and family) traditions that I’ve struggled to understand over the years is the annual inundation of gifts every time my in-laws visit. This visit my kids were inundated with gifts twice: once when Nainai arrived and again when Yeye arrived.  For those of you who have not experienced this, let me give you the play-by-play. 

My mother and father-in-law bring two bags when they fly.  The smaller of the two contains their clothes for the week, while the larger bag is stuffed with gifts for my kids (their only grandkids). The first order of business when in my in-laws arrive--no matter how late--is the distributing of gifts (toys, school supplies, clothing for the next three years, shoes, underwear, socks, books, movies, CDs, and pretty much anything else you can imagine.) 

In the middle of the gift-distributing process and about the time our kids’ eyes were beginning to glaze over, my husband and I realized that we should confiscate and hide some of these gifts to use as Christmas gifts from Nainai and Yeye (since they probably hadn’t thought about Christmas yet).

Well, our plan caused great strife for both generations. My son saw my husband carry a load of toys upstairs, and then later re-traced dad’s steps to look for them.  My daughter saw everything, and later asked me why Yeye and Nainai hadn’t wrapped the gifts. And my in-laws were just plain mad that we prevented them from giving these gifts to their grandchildren right away.

Days later, the kids had forgotten about the gifts, and my in-laws had wrapped the confiscated items.  I felt only marginally pleased with our solution, feeling like--in attempt to keep our kids from becoming spoiled brats--we had offended some deep-seated belief about how Chinese grandparents were supposed to show their love for their grandchildren.

In Chinese culture, love is communicated in ways that I’m not used to, through gift giving, food, and scolding.  I’m trying hard to be understanding of this cultural difference, but my pragmatic Western self just wants to tell my in-laws to save their money, give their grandkids a hug, and tell them, “I love you” instead. My in-laws are learning how to hug, though, so I’m trying to learn how to be understanding of their need to give gifts.

May the gifts you give this season be filled with love!