030: chinese new year prep

No outfit post for today-- we were too busy with prepping for the new year! Chinese New Year is under a week away & somehow there is always a million things to do beforehand.

I've figured out the way my culture works... food = love.
Yeah, it makes for horribly unhealthy people & really bad habits in terms of our relationships for food, but that's beside the point. Food is basically how we celebrate every special occasion too, so there is lots of New Year baking to be done! Well, I like to think of it all as "baking", but actually, all of our yummy treats are deep-fried. YIKES.

Today one of the things we made were deep fried butterfly cookies. They're thin, crispy cookies that are sugary, kinda funnel cake tasting & are basically made of flour & sugar deep fried. I've got a few photos of the process below:


these things that look like branding irons are the 'molds' for the cookies


first, dip the irons in the hot oil to warm them up. This prevents the batter from sticking to the irons.


after heating the irons, you dip them into the watery batter.


you need the irons to be heated so that the batter doesn't stay stuck on the it... but you don't want to heat the iron for too long, or you can end up just cooking a spot of the batter right in the bowl!




when you dip the batter into the hot oil, it bubbles a lot :)


and a couple of shakes should loosen it from the mold!


because they're so thin, you only need to fry it for a few seconds on each side
& then remove them from the oil when they're golden brown


voila!

More pics of new years treats later this week! but some outfits in the mix too :)

xo


[ETA: Mai just informed me that these cookies are called ROSETTES! AT LAST! & here's a great how-to on getting the cookies to fall off the iron. THANK YOU MAI!]