Chocolate-Hazelnut Macau-Style Cookies

I bought Mooncakes and Milk Bread by Kristina Cho last Mother’s Day: one copy for my Mom, and a copy for myself. But I haven’t tried to make any of the recipes until recently. This crumbly cookie was a great intro to the author’s fresh interpretations of classic Chinese bakery favorites.

The headnote to the recipe talks about the traditional Macau almond cookie and the deviations the author took. I was able to find mung bean flour, so I used that instead of the kinako (roasted soybean) flour she calls for as an easier substitution.

The dough was quite sticky and was hard to work with, so I did chill it for about an hour. After weighing the entire mass, I scaled out 10 equal balls, then pressed them right onto the Silpat-lined sheet pan with a cookie stamp. (I have yet to purchase a mooncake mold press!)

I liked these crumbly cookies a lot, and as she notes in the recipe, they taste just like a Ferrero Rocher chocolate. A week later, I made a double batch with almond flour instead of hazelnut. This time, the dough was drier, and I made each cookie slightly smaller, trimming the pressed rounds with a cookie cutter. These turned out great also, but didn’t have the pronounced aroma the hazelnut ones did.

You can see the author making these cookies in this video.