Chinese New Year season is a time when people celebrating it indulge in many of its favourite seasonal goodies, among which are the CNY cookies.
In Singapore, supermarkets will display towers or heaps of stacks of the CNY cookies to attract its shoppers. Such cookies can be fun for people to indulge in the feasts between families, relatives and even friends. While it can be fun to keep bingeing on these seasonal cookies, do you know the story behind these cookies and the significance of it - how they become so well received in the Singaporean Chinese community?
Let us learn about the importance of the CNY cookies. Different cookies have different meanings in terms of family values, wealth, health, relationships and career. Some carry meanings with pronunciations that resemble auspicious objects such as gold ingots and fortune. Here are some of the examples:
- Love letters are popular CNY cookies shaped like cigars. But they are far from cigars. The story goes that the letters were often rolled into wafer like structures so that secret lovers could communicate with each other in the past. When you eat these love letters, it is a belief that you will take the lovers' messages to your heart, meaning you will take them more seriously.
- Kueh Bangkit are popular tapioca flavoured CNY cookies with origins from China and then more development in Malaya. They used as altar offerings to the ancestors. It was a traditional belief that the kueh bangkit cookies can help them overcome any challenges in life with shapes of goldfishes and chrysanthemum symbolizing wealth and fortune. Later in Malaya, the Peranakan and Malay community use them during Chinese New Year or Hari Raya festival and this tradition continues to this day in Singapore and Malaysia.
- Almond cookies are another hot favourite CNY cookies that are good alternatives comparable with the kueh bangkit cookies. These cookies are special because it originated from Chinese immigrants in the USA from the early 20th century onwards. They are actually adapted from the Chinese walnut cookies. The walnut in the center is believed to bring good fortune to them.
People love these CNY cookies so much that they would shop for them during the period before the actual festival. But some of them would make them at home. To make them there are some recipes which you can use to bake and make.
Chinese almond cookies are some of the most baked CNY cookies among Singaporeans. They are well loved for their sweet and salty and yet easy to melt abilities. Common ingredients used are salt, baking soda, raw almond nuts, flour, sugar and an egg. They would be knead using a dough and be preheated to finished CNY cookies ready for consumption.
The alternative Chinese peanut cookies are similar but they need more butter in the making. Such CNY cookies would be loved for their nice buttery taste. Instead of almond nuts, the raw peanuts are used. Like almond cookies and kueh bangkit, they are also easy to melt inside mouths. These are very well shopped for CNY cookies in the local Singapore market.
For more research on CNY cookies, read more - https://goodyfeed.com/the-meanings-behind-the-names-of-popular-cny-cookies-are-fascinating/
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