Chinese Macau-Style Mung Bean Almond Cookies

A classic Chinese New Year cookie, Macau Mung Bean Almond Cookies are crumbly, lightly sweet, and full of almond flavor. 

Chinese New Year cookies: mung bean almond cookies

With Chinese New Year around the corner, I was reminded of Macau Almond Mung Bean Cookies when I visited my grandparents’ house and noticed an empty tin in their cupboard.

As a kid, I remember eating this style of almond cookie from a fluorescent pink and yellow tin. It was a tender, crumbly cookie — slightly sweet and fragrant with essence of almond.

These classic nutty Mung Bean Almond Cookies originated from Canton, China. But they are most prominently found in Macau.

You’ll see many vendors and hawkers in Macau with claims of having the best almond cookie: the most famous one being from Koi Kei Bakery.

Admittedly, almond cookies from the tin weren’t my favourite as a kid since the crumbly cookie would leave my throat powdery dry and I’d need to chase it down with a glass of milk. But now as I’m reminiscing about these childhood memories, I want to make these cookies for my kids so they can experience the flavours for themselves.

Ingredients in Chinese almond cookies 

Almond cookies are surprisingly simple to make with minimal ingredients:

• almond flour
• mung bean flour
• rice flour
• icing sugar (powdered sugar)
• some fats

Almond flour is just whole almond nuts processed into a fine flour. It may also be labeled as “ground almonds.” (This is the same flour you use to make French macarons.)

You can find almond flour in health food stores and regular supermarkets, including Costco.

Mung bean flour can come in a green flour (made from mung beans with the skins left on) or yellow flour (mung beans de-skinned). Either variety will work. It may also be labeled as “moong bean,” “green bean starch” or “green bean flour.”

Mung bean flour is readily sold in Asian supermarkets in small packages.

Rice flour (white rice flour) is used as a binder for the cookies and is made of finely milled white rice.

Rice flour is easily found in Asian supermarkets in small packages, and increasingly more common in regular grocery stores. Be sure not to confuse it with glutinous rice flour, which is different and produces a chewy texture.

Tools needed to make almond cookies 

The one unique tool you do need for this recipe is a Chinese mooncake stamp/mold which will leave a decorative imprint on the finished cookie and help the cookie to hold its shape.

Traditional Chinese mooncake/cookie molds are wooden and you place the dough firmly into the mold and bang it out. More modern mooncake molds are spring-loaded, where you place the dough into the mold and then eject it out by pressing on the lever.

Another tool that you’ll want to have is a plastic water sprayer bottle. You can pick these up at the dollar store. I like having one that is dedicated to kitchen use, filled with clean filtered water. Spraying the cookies with water helps to moisten them so they are not too crumbly while handling.

These delicate cookies are fragile, but the nuttiness and aroma from the almond and mung bean brings me memories of celebrating Chinese New Year’s with my grandparents.

Other Chinese New Year recipes

If you’re looking for other recipes to celebrate the Chinese New Year, try some Chinese Marbled Tea Eggs, Peanut Tang Yuan (Glutinous Rice Balls), or Bubur Cha Cha (Coconut Milk Dessert). 

From my family to yours, Gung Hei Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year!

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Yield: 24 cookies

Chinese Macau-Style Mung Bean Almond Cookies

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A classic Chinese New Year cookie, Macau Mung Bean Almond Cookies are crumbly, lightly sweet, and full of almond flavor. 

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 55 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 25 minutes

Ingredients

• 180 g mung bean flour
• 80 g rice flour
• 60 g almond flour
• 60 g icing sugar (powdered sugar)
• 50 g butter, room temp
• 50 g coconut oil, room temp
• ¼ tsp almond extract

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 200F.
2. Add mung bean flour, rice flour, and almond flour to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Place in the preheated oven to lightly toast the flours, stirring intermittently, for about 20 mins.
3. Remove the flours from oven and let cool. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, sift together the cooled mung bean flour, rice flour, almond flour, with the icing sugar.
5. In a separate bowl, cream together the softened butter and coconut oil with a fork. Add in the almond extract.
6. Add the butter mixture into the flour mixture, and gently mix until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Spritz the mixture with some water.
7. Gather a small bit of the flour mixture in your hands and clump it together -- if it holds together, then it’s ready. If it’s too crumbly, add a little spritz of water to it until the mixture can be formed into a shape.
8. Preheat your oven to 300F.
9. Use a heaping tablespoon to fill the mixture into a (plastic) mooncake mold. Use your fingers to gently pat the mixture in to a depth of 1 cm. Then, invert the mooncake mold, press down firmly on the mooncake plunger to imprint the shape and release onto a lined baking sheet. (If using a wooden mooncake mold, place the mixture firmly into the mold, invert it and bang it out onto the baking sheet.) Repeat with the remaining dough.
10. Bake for 30-35 minutes at 300F until slightly browned and aromatic.
11. Let cool completely and store in an airtight container for up to 1
    month.

Recommended Products

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• 
  Almond Flour, Blanched, 2lb
• 
  Traditional Mini Wooden Mid-autumn Festival Mooncake Mold
• 
  Mid-Autumn Festival Hand-Pressure Moon Cake Mould

Nutrition Information:

Yield:

24

Serving Size:

1 cookie
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 99Total Fat: 6g

Michelle

Michelle enjoys learning and discovering different foods from around the world and recreating them in her own kitchen. She is an avid matcha lover and believes that the best food is made from scratch. Michelle develops and photographs recipes at her blog SiftAndSimmer.com.

www.siftandsimmer.com/