love letters

Chinese New Year means different things to different people. For some, the promise of seeing anyone and everyone is enough. For others, its all about the red packets and playing mah-jong. For me, it's (rather unsurprisingly) about the food.

Every year, Dad & I spend a couple of hours sitting at stove making biscuits. "The Stove?" you ask, "Surely you mean the oven?" But no! These flaky, crispy biscuits are made stove top.


Love letters, or "kuih kapek" are a Chinese New Year favourite. They're notoriously hard to make and store, but eating them makes it all seem so worthwhile.

Kuih Kapek

makes approximately 70 biscuits (not including the burnt ones...)

Ingredients:

6 eggs
1 cup rice flour
1 cup white sugar
1 tin (** ml) coconut milk

Method:

1. Mix the ingredients in a bowl.

2.

3. Heat moulds over coals (or in this case, a gas stove).

4. When the moulds are hot, quickly ladle the batter onto one side of the mould and swirl quickly to distribute. Clamp the two halves of the mould back together and return to the gas burner. The batter will bubble over a little bit.

5. When the edges that have bubbled over are cooked, scrape them off and flip the mould. Let the moulds sit over the gas for another 30 seconds.

6. Open the moulds and check if the colour is right.

7. If the colour is good, slide the biscuits out, fold quickly into quarters (here is where asbestos hands come in handy!) and put aside to cool.