Salted Egg Yolk Cookie with Curry Leaves 咖喱叶蛋黄酥饼

Nope. You wouldn't find curry taste in your cookies. But this is one darn good recipe.

Salted Egg Yolk Cookie seems to be the craze now. I am intrigued to say the least. Curiosity prompted me to try this phenomenon of mixing savoury with sweet. Well, I wouldn't be surprised at all with the outcome since the liu sha bao (Salted Egg Yolk Custard Bun) uses similar ingredients and has been a hit for the longest time.

There are many recipes for this salted egg yolk cookie available, each having their own uniqueness. I couldn't decide on which one to use. I did not want cookies that have too much milk powder taste. Neither do I want shortening, which is basically tasteless, in my cookies. In my opinion, salted egg yolk's perfect partner would be butter, just like in the liu sha bao. Therefore, I adapted from my own liu sha bao custard filling recipe. I saw from somewhere that adding curry leaves would add to the taste and I was all the more intrigued. So I divided my little batch of trial cookie and made one with curry leaves and the other without for comparison.

I was glad that I made two types for comparison. I had great expectations for this salted egg yolk cookie since many have been raining praises. On the other hand, I had zero expectation for the one with curry leaves. If I did not have the curry leaves version, I would be perfectly happy already. But who would have expect the curry leaves to make such a difference in its own subtlety. It was not the leaves alone. It was the overall combination that blends so well to exude this indescribable taste. Somehow, the cookies tasted less one dimension (sweet) and the smell of the salted egg yolks was elevated, making it awfully hard to resist a bite. In the end, I decided to stick with the curry leaves version.

Salted Egg Yolk Cookie with Curry Leaves 咖喱叶蛋黄酥饼

Makes 37 medium cookies

Ingredients

110 g flour
10 g cornflour
15 g milk powder
1/8 tsp baking powder
85 g salted butter
40 g castor sugar
3 salted egg yolks
10 curry leaves, chopped very finely
2 tbsp Nestum flakes
1 egg yolk for egg wash

Cooking Instructions

1. Steam and mash egg yolks. If you like some chucks, do not mash it too finely.

2. Cream butter and castor sugar until creamy. Add in mashed salted egg yolks, chopped curry leaves and mix well.

3. Sieve flour, cornflour, milk powder, salt and baking powder into butter mixture and combine well.

4. Rest dough for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 170C. Remove dough and roll dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut dough with a cookie cutter.

5. Brush egg wash on cookies. Sprinkle some Nestum flakes on top of cookies.

6. Bake at 160C for 12-15 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies. Cool completely before storing in air tight jars.




Want something easy? Check out this rustic Butter Cookies recipe: