Gong Xi Fa Cai!!

As an American, the most I ever learned about Chinese New Year and the Chinese Zodiac was by reading the paper place mats at Chinese Restaurants. You know the ones...red and white with all of the animals and the story about how they all raced and the rat won. And then it would tell you some horoscope style thing about which of the animals you are compatible with and how lucky you would be that year...

I've known my whole life that I am a Dragon, and I was always proud of it because, frankly, dragons are sweet. I've also always known that one of my sisters is a Tiger, the other a Snake, and my brother a Rat.

This information always seemed somewhat useless, until I moved to Singapore. And then Chinese New Year became a big deal.

I could write pages and pages and pages about all the things I've learned about Chinese New Year--the traditions, the stories, the foods, the implications of what year you were born in.

But I won't.

Instead, I will relate the story of my CNY dessert this year. It all starts with Bake At 350.

I started following this blog about a year ago, and I fell in love with it almost instantly. Most of my regular and favorite things to bake have come from this blog in some form or another. But the stars of this blog are the cookies. Not just any cookies. Gorgeous cookies. Stunning cookies. AMAZING cookies. They are cut and decorated into just about anything!

And for a year, I have been intimidated by these cookies.

But then came CNY, and I needed to make a dessert for this party I was going to and I really wanted to do something festive but I'm not really an authority on Chinese desserts and that was when I thought of the cookies.

All it would take would be a batch of round sugar cookies and some colored royal icing to produce this.

  
Sugar Cookies (original found here)

What you'll need:

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cups sugar
2 sticks or 227 g butter (unsalted), cold
1 egg (room temperature)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350F/176C

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and then set it aside.

Cream together the sugar and butter in your mixer. You may need to let it do it's thing for a few minutes, though you should scrape down the sides halfway through.

Add the egg and vanilla and mix it just until they are combined.

Gradually add in the dry ingredients that you set aside earlier (roughly a cup at a time) while mixing at a low speed. Don't forget to scrape down the bowl, especially getting the crumbs at the bottom!

On a clean surface, dusted with flour, roll the dough out to approximately 1/4 of an inch. It might be a little crumbly, so just knead it together and don't worry. Then you can cut out your shapes! For lack of an actual round cookie cutter, I just used a glass.

Place your cookies on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. They will be golden brown around the edges and on the bottom.

For the icing, I'll just let you follow the recipe from Bridget:  Royal Icing

I used Wilton's Copper gel food coloring, and just used different amounts to make the different shades.

I decided to make them into Chinese coins and while trying to research different Chinese characters, my sister had the most amazing idea of putting dragons on them. Which is how we ended up with Mushu from Mulan!

And can't forget the cake!!

Seeing as we just rang in the year of the Dragon, I am so very excited to be a dragon. Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone!!