Corned Beef Egg Sandwich 蛋牛治

Here's something fun and easy to make for a snack as well as being a classic menu selection at all Hong Kong style cafes, also known as cha chaan tengs 茶餐廳.  One of my personal favorite late afternoon snacks at the local cha chaan teng is one order of the Corned Beef Egg Sandwich 蛋牛治 along with a tall cool glass of Hong Kong Style Iced Lemon Tea 凍檸茶.  

Ah...nothing better to satisfy those late in the day stomach rumbles!   It's also super easy to make at home and I like it to do that so I can make my Corned Beef Egg Sandwich 蛋牛治 exactly the way that I like it best: soft bread enveloping tender flavorful beef and just scrambled lusciously soft and buttery eggs.  Yumm...

Sweet Cow Ear Cookies 甜牛耳朵餅

As promised, here is my sweet version of that festive Chinese New Year treat, the Cow Ear Cookie. In our last post we discussed the recipe for the traditional Chinese Cow Ear Cookie 牛耳朵餅,  a savory cookie flavored with the exotic flavors of the Chinese red fermented bean curd.  I found the flavors of the red fermented bean curd in a cookie so intriguing that I decided to try to make a sweet version of the same.  

Here is the result, my version of a Sweet Cow Ear Cookie 甜牛耳朵餅, a buttery sweet pinwheel cookie swirled through with the distinct umami flavors of the Chinese red fermented bean curd.  Psst...tell you a secret...I think we like these sweet cookies even better than the traditional savory ones!!

Cow Ear Cookies 牛耳朵餅

This traditional Chinese New Year cookie that has a really good name.  An animal part name...a name that only the Chinese could think of, loving as they so do to name things in a strange ways.  Personally I could think of many other names for a cookie like this that would be as appropriate and definitely more pleasing to the ear (and the stomach!)  

Nevertheless the aptly named but strange sounding Cow Ear Cookie 牛耳朵 is a pleasingly pinwheel patterned deliciously savory cookie flavored and colored with the interesting and rather exotic flavor of the Chinese red fermented bean curd 紅腐乳.

Chinese Date Paste 棗泥餡

Traditional Chinese sweets typically use a couple of kinds of fillings like red bean paste (see my Grandma's red bean paste recipe), lotus seed paste, egg custard (see our custard recipe inside our Snow Skin Custard Mooncake recipe post), etc.  

Another traditional Chinese dessert filling paste is this yummilicious concoction made from Chinese dates also known as jujubes 棗, a sweet pulpy fruit that is often used to sweeten Chinese desserts.  The Chinese Date Paste 棗泥餡 is pretty simple to make and the end result is a rich, fruity, sweetly smooth and thick paste that can be used for stuffing pastries like Chinese Rice Flour Cookies 紅棗泥炒米餅 or for making candy like Chinese Date Walnut Candy 棗泥核桃糕.

Chinese Date Walnut Candy 棗泥核桃糕

I'm sure that every Chinese kid has eaten these delicious chewy traditional Chinese Date Walnut Candies 棗泥核桃糕 at sometime or the other.  Made of Chinese dates and walnuts, its soft sweet fruity chewiness packed full of walnuts, it's a delicious treat anytime. For the Chinese New Year, it is the perfect traditional candy to fill your Chinese Tray of Togetherness 攢盒 with!  

We decided to go for broke this year and make these Chinese Date Walnut Candies at home and the resulting fresh yummiliciousness was even better than we expected.  Fresh homemade candies really rock the flavor!