Almond London/伦敦杏仁巧克力饼/アーモンドチョコクッキー [CNY Bakes 2011 - Part II]

Almond London is one of the famous Raya cookies in recent years and has now becoming a popular Chinese New Year cookie too. I have no idea where it got its name from and wondering if Londoners aware of this elegant look cookie.

It is a whole almond wrapped with cookie dough, baked, coated with chocolate and served in small paper case. To me, it is not very hard to make but time consuming wrapping the almond one by one I guess that is why the price is increasing. It is selling at around RM1 per piece which a small container costs RM20 or more.

Recipe from Dapur Tanpa Sempadan, translated into English as follows:

Ingredients (makes 120 pcs):
125 g butter, room temperature
75 g icing sugar
1 no. egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla essence
225 g all-purpose flour
1 tsp emplex, sift together with flour
335 g whole almond, toasted

coating:
300 g cooking chocolate
10g vegetable shortening
Chopped almond, toasted
Small paper cases

Methods:

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix together butter, icing sugar till well combined. Add in egg yolk and vanilla essence and mix till creamy.
2. Add in flour in batches, mix with spatula till soft dough is formed.
3. Cover dough with cling wrap while forming cookies. To form cookie, wrap a whole almond with 3/4 tsp of dough.
4. Place cookies on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
5. Bake in a preheated oven at 150°C for 10-12 minutes. Cool on rack.
6. Coating: Melt chocolate with double boiling method then stir in shortening and mix well.
7. Coat cookie with chocolate, place in a paper case then sprinkle some chopped almond over the top.
8. Set aside till chocolate is fully set before storing in airtight container.
   

Cook's Notes:

1. I used 70% all-purpose flour, 20% rice flour and 10% corn flour, and, omitted emplex.
2. For the almond, I bought 300 g but used only 150 g.