Many Kuching people are familiar with Kuih S for Chinese New Year (CNY). You don’t see it any other day. It will only come out only nearer to CNY. However, even for CNY, you don’t see the Kuih S everywhere except one brand only in a supermarket. I didn’t come across any other manufacturer for it. It’s quite rare to find it these days. I’ve been trying to find the recipe high and low online. Found two only. However, I didn’t follow to the tee. I had to make adjustments as the original recipe was too wet and too sweet. I added flour but forgot to reduce the sugar.
Recipe
Anyway, here’s the recipe I’m using. The recipe can make approximately 80 pieces of cookies.
Ingredients:
75g salted/unsalted butter
60g castor sugar (can reduce the sugar to 40g if you don’t want it to be too sweet)
1 egg (any size)
190g plain flour
Instructions:
- Cream butter and sugar until white and creamy.
- Add egg and beat for 2 minutes until incorporated.
- Sift the flour and mix. The dough should not be sticky once incorporated.
- Shape the dough. About 1/2 to 1 tsp for each piece of cookie.
- Freeze for at least 1/2 hour before baking.
- Bake in preheated oven at 150 degrees Celsius for 35-40 minutes. Adjust the timing according to your oven. Make sure it’s cooked and you don’t burn it.
- Cool and store in an air-tight container.
Final thoughts
It’s actually butter cookies shaped into “S”. The taste didn’t taste exactly like what I’m familiar with. Maybe it’s the sugar as the ones I had back then didn’t taste this sweet. The texture was a bit different too. Don’t know how to explain. Only those who had tasted the traditional ones will know the difference. Maybe the recipe I found taste familiar to the writer but not me.
Also, the suggested temperature and time were not suitable for my oven as the heat was too high and time was too short to cook it. I adjusted the temperature and timing based on my oven temperament. Mine turned out golden brown as I baked it a bit too long. 35 minutes should be fine but I pushed it to 40 minutes. As long as it’s cooked and not burnt. The Kuih S I know wasn’t pale in colour as the recipe I found. It’s not as golden brown as mine too. It’s somewhere in between. Hence, do adjust your oven setting accordingly.
Oh well… Anyway, the key is that you can shape it any shape you want. However, since it’s snake year this year, I’m just going to make the the cookies shaped like “S”. At least it’s not as scary as a snake.
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