Mom's Traditional Bakes

It is customary for guests to be served tidbits at Lunar New Year open houses. Biscuits or cookies feature prominently in each household, alongside other confectionery such as sweets, chocolates, and even preserved fruits.

Mom bakes our Lunar New Year cookies every year. She would start her baking sprees at least a month before to churn out different types of cookies for our household use. In fact, Mom makes enough every year to give away to relatives and friends.

Mom's specialties are her pineapple tarts and her kuih bangkit.

Pineapple tarts

Mom makes the pineapple jam by herself. Fresh pineapples are skinned, cored, cubed, blended and then cooked. Sugar is also added, though Mom's pineapple jam is usually slightly tangy. The pineapple tart pastry is simply a short crust pastry dough which is rolled out and then cut with a mould. Pineapple jam would then be spooned into the centre of the pastry dough, and decorated with diamond-shaped pastry dough on top. Making those tarts is a tedious process, in my opinion.

Kuih Bangkit

Kuih Bangkit is a cookie that exudes warmth as it melts in your mouth. The warmth comes from the roasted tapioca flour, which is the key ingredient. Typically, Mom "roasts" the flour by stirring it in a wok over a low fire. Other ingredients for this cookie are sugar, eggs and coconut milk which is concocted into a thick paste. The paste is then mixed with the flour, kneaded, and cut with a mould and then baked.

When I was younger, Mom used to take orders for her pineapple tarts and Kuih Bangkit. Hence, I remember the long hours I spent in the kitchen helping her to complete the orders. My tasks were to spoon pineapple jam into the tarts, and then dad usually decorated the tarts. For Kuih Bangkit, I was always tasked to cut the biscuits with the plastic moulds. By the end of every baking session, my right palm was always sore! Then, I would also have to pack the cookies into containers. In those days, there were no disposable plastic containers, so we stored the cookies in aluminium Milo cans or the likes of it.

Now, Mom does not sell her cookies anymore, and I too, have not helped her since. But those those times when Mom and I laboured in the kitchen to bake cookies would be forever ingrained in my memory.