Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen the holiday season is coming up so we are going to
do some Christmas baking or New Year baking or whatever it is you celebrate they're basically
festive little cookies that are great as gifts we are making Singapore cookies or
in Thai cookies syncopal now apparently it's not a thing in Singapore they have a similar
thing called cashew cookies I don't know why we call them Singapore cookies but basically they
are little shortbread cookies with the cashew on top with an egg yolk glaze and today we are
going to make ours with black sesame flavor they are so so good and you can make them in advance
and package them and send them to someone far away Oh perfect let's get started first order of
business the black sesame seeds now what you want to do is toast these and to do that put them in a
saute pan dry with no oil or anything and just keep toasting them over medium heat until they
start popping and smoking now because they're black it's very hard to tell if they're toasted
or burnt or under toasted so what I go by is once they start popping a lot let them pop for
about 10-15 seconds and turn it off look at them really closely and some of the black coating will
start to split and you can see the white seed underneath the slit and if that white seed has
browned then you know that they're toasted you do not want to get lazy and skip this part I know we
all try to shortcut recipes all the time this is not a place to do it if you are in a rush you can
buy sesame seeds already toasted usually in the Japanese aisle they sell black summate sesame
seeds already toasted if you don't toast these you will not get that iconic black sesame flavor
also important that you don't under toast it if you under toast it again the full flavor won't
come out okay we're going to grind it up into a powder you can also make white ones with white
sesame seeds if you don't like sesame at all you can just do ground toasted cashews here goes and
I'm pulsing and shaking it because I do not want this to to sesame butter there we go and I know
mine was nicely toasted because I can see a tint of brown once I've ground it up now we're going to
just mix up our dry ingredients so I've got some all-purpose flour here now my little secret is
I'm going to mix in some tapioca starch tapioca starch is going to reduce the total amount of
gluten in this recipe and it's going to make the cookies tender and crumbly and it gives almost a
creaminess after you start chewing a little bit of salt go in with the black sesame give that a whisk
you want this well mixed before you mix it in with the wet ingredients I have got my stand mixer here
which I love but you don't need this you can just use the hand mixer or you can even do this by hand
if you want it'll take a little more time but it's not a big deal I'm going to beat in some unsalted
butter which has been softened so I pulled this out last night beat it a couple of times just to
break up the butter that's it on Lois feet again I do not want to whisk air into it so icing sugar
or powdered sugar hmm this is what I always inhale sugar and suddenly it's sweetened my mouth neutral
flavored oil anything will do that's neutral flavored and now we're just going to mix it
until it's combined on the lowest speed scrape the side one time to get everybody in the pool
I'm going to add my dry ingredients see this is almost done only about
half of it I just find it mixes more easily if I do it half at a time
then you go in with the other half and I find you kick up less flour in the air this way too
okay I'm going to give it a quick scrape just to make sure nothing
is left unattended at the very bottom so get to the very bottom one last stretch
that's it it's done now it's going to look crumbly that's what you want it'll come together in the
end but at this point what you're looking for is that it's a homogeneous texture that you
don't have any lumps of butter or any lumps of dry flour and all this will come into a dough
in no time and now you're just going to quickly knead this together into a ball and you're not
really kneading it like bread you're just trying to bring it together into a dough so it's not
crumbly anymore and see it sticking together quite nicely if at this point you're kneading
it and it's cracked it's not holding together well it's cracking everywhere put it back in the mixer
add a like a teaspoon of oil at a time to try to moisten it a little bit more okay so now that it's
sort of a dough hey I've got little cracks that's okay the problem I was talking about is if it's
just kind of everywhere now we're going to flatten it into a sheet about a centimeter thick so these
cookies are quite thick and which is why they're so cute because they're tiny little cookie but
they're thick sort of like this little cube so I'm going to use my rolling pin but I find it's easier
to get it started by just sort of hitting it don't worry about the cracks that form it will resolve
itself out roll it out a little more see because this dough is quite moist it tends to stick so
them back the bashing works well so one centimetre and now I'm going to try to salvage the edges and
you will not overwork this dough there's too much butter in here and the tapioca starch helps as
well sit a little thick yeah it's a little thick I'm gonna yeah that's good okay so once you've got
it down to the right thickness just give it a roll to smooth out the surface because you want this to
be a flat surface and now it's cookie cutter time for cookie syncopal you want little little cookie
cutters okay they're supposed to be bite-sized cute little things I got these at the Japanese
dollar store and there they were actually labeled veg bowl cutters avoid cookie cutters that have a
lot of small thin corners those are going to burn quickly and also this is a pretty
crumbly dough so those edges will tend to break off more easily so something that's round ish
if you're happy with the amount of flowers that you have and you're just getting lazy
towards the end because trust me this is going to feel like oh my god this is lasting forever
I keep having more and more dough I just cut them into squares and those are the ones that I'll eat
myself and those ones that I'm gonna give it to other people because at some point you're just
like alright that's enough nothing wrong with squared cookies these cookies are gonna get
little cashews garnished on top but the thing is you only need a half of a cashew and they almost
never sell cashews already split and these are raw but if all you can find is roasted they will
work as well what you do is you hold a paring knife you grip the blade so it's firm if there's
a little sometimes there's a little button right here remove the little button it's like a little
nut and wedge the knife into the middle of the cashew and then just rock the knife forward and
backward and eventually it'll get inside and some cashews will split right now but some are sort of
more tightly bound together so you have to go a little further before you can cleanly split them
off now we're going to give these cookies you can couple the iconic glaze and it's simply just egg
yolk so I've got an egg yolk here and a pastry brush and then brush the top just like that and
now I'm going to put the cashews on and it's like a little smiley face I've seen one where they use
a little rubber rubber ducky cookie cutter and then the cashews are like wings that was really
cute too these are raw right now but by the time they come out they will be perfectly roasted if
you already have roasted cashews when they come out they'll still be roasted they're not going to
be burnt so don't worry about that just one more glaze quickly over the cashews now if you're lazy
and you needed a shortcut you could just put the cashews on and then put the glaze on I just find
it that way because of this little corner here it's hard to get the glaze evenly on the cookie
so I like to do a brush on the cookie first when it's flat and then do one more brush at the end
all right up again check these out bears I look at the bottom and it should just have a light golden
color on it if you got no color at all the flavor isn't as intense I like it a little bit toasty so
I'm going to show you the white sesame ones that I made exact same recipe except I use toasted white
sesame instead of black so same idea a little bit of a light brown color on these I actually like
to make too cuz then they look really cute side by side black and white they're almost too - to
eat I'm surprised how good these are every time I eat them because they look so you know they look
like regular simple shortbread cookies but but the flavor of the toasted black sesame really
brings them to another level and suddenly there's something exotic that you don't run
into very often nice and brittle because of that tapioca as you chew it just becomes a little bit
creamy so for the holiday season pack these up for your friends or bake them for yourself but
I have to warn you these are addictive when I was testing for this recipe I had someone here
on in the house and they did not last long to us it was terrible in a good way so I hope you give
this a try the recipe as always is on hot pie kitchen calm when you make it send me a photo
Facebook Twitter or Instagram I'd love to see if you make them into different shapes and oh send
me the photos and I'll include them into my new sweater if you haven't subscribed to the YouTube
channel you can do so right here and I will see you next time for your next delicious tiny