Happy National Library Week and Chinese Almond Cookie/Almond Cake Day!

This semester we are featuring recipes from cookbooks located in the UW-Stout Archives Special Collections. The Special Collections are older, more rare, or Stout related books that were originally located in the UW-Stout Library’s main stacks collection. This past year we added a wealth of cookbooks to the special collections, and I scoured the shelves for recipes to bring the world of baking to your home during this time.

End National Library week on a high note by curling up with a good book and a treat this weekend, Chinese Almond Cakes, found in Around the World Making Cookies, by Josephine Perry, 1940, TX771.P4 1940.

Chinese Almond Cake recipe card

If you are looking for a good book recommendation, or want to learn more about UW-Stout’s 125+ year history, I suggest An Idea Comes of Age: UW-Stout, 1891-2016, by Jerry Poling. We have them available to sell in the archives!: https://secure.touchnet.com/C21720_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=2128&SINGLESTORE=true

An Idea Comes of Age book

Archives Assistant Julie Hatfield at book signing, 2017 UW-Stout Family Weekend

When I was originally picking out recipes to try baking this semester, I did not realize that this recipe for Chinese Almond Cakes is very similar to the previous recipe I tried of Almond Short Bread. They both had a crumbly texture after being mixed together, and I needed to add water and mix the dough with my hands to make it stick together to shape into cookies. I did substitute the rice flour for regular flour and cornstarch, or you could also use cake flour for baking. Rice flour and cornstarch are both used as thickeners in recipes. So I used 1 cup white flour, but took out 2 tablespoons flour and added 2 tablespoons cornstarch, and sift together. I rolled out 1 ½ dozen cookies with this recipe. They turned out nice and soft. If you can find rice flour at your local grocery store, I suggest trying to use it. Bon Appetit!

Recipe Ingredients: flour, cornstarch, brown sugar, butter, ground almonds 

Cookies ready to go in the oven

Cookies hot out of the oven

 

Some variations of Chinese Almond Cookie recipes:

Table for Two by Julie Chiou: https://www.tablefortwoblog.com/chinese-new-year-almond-cookies/

Taste of Home: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/chinese-almond-cookies/

The Woks of Life: https://thewoksoflife.com/almond-cookies-chinese/

By: Julie Hatfield, Archives Assistant, UW-Stout Archives