An edited version of this recipe piece was first published on Food52. I wanted to share this dish with the community there to bring a bit of new year cheer and share my food culture as well, but I also had all these beautiful photos from the recipe tests, so I’m republishing it here too!

It’ll be the Lunar New Year soon, but this year’s lead-up to the festivities is hitting a little different. In Malaysia where I’m at, with the pandemic an omnipresent threat and inter-state travel being banned, the merrymaking will be muted, the celebrations curbed. There won’t be a tuan yuan fan (reunion dinner) with my relatives two statelines away. There won’t be the din of lion dances and cacophony of firecrackers. There won’t even be many hong baos (red packets) passed around. (To my deep-pocketed friends and relatives though, I’m now accepting e-red packets.)

Despite all that is lacking in this year’s new year, I can at least take solace in the one thing that will still be as prevalent as the pandemic itself—snacks! From pineapple tarts to shrimp crackers, tapioca cookies to kuih kapit (coconut tuiles), snacks both sweet and savory are sure to invade the kitchens of those who celebrate the Lunar New Year. And of all the new year snacks out there, the one that I always look forward to gobbling down is peanut cookies!

Peanut cookies are these fragrantly, blatantly nutty cookies. They’re made of peanuts, ground and pounded into a fine powder, kneaded into a cookie dough along with flour and sugar, then rolled into thumb-sized balls that are baked till golden. They fall apart at the softest bite, coats your tongue and teeth with its toasty nuttiness, and gives you the same satisfaction as eating peanut butter straight out of the jar, minus the judgement.

Though they are widely considered to be a Chinese pastry item, they are much more popular within the Chinese communities in Malaysia, Singapore, and their neighboring countries than in China itself. Growing up in Malaysia, I’ve had peanut cookies every single Lunar New Year for as long as I can remember. They’ve always been my go-to festive snack, and I would pop dozens of these into my mouth throughout the 15 days of the new year celebrations. I’ll have the lingering taste of peanuts on my lips as I ran around with Pop-pop brand firecrackers and sparklers, drop cookie crumbs in between the sofa while watching Shaolin Soccer as it played on the TV every year, and even munch on these cookies during meals of hotpot and ham.

This year, owing to the pandemic, I’m feeling especially impatient on getting my hands on peanut cookies. Long before the shops started to sell them, I made my own just to feed my annual obsession, and broke some rules in the process due to my impatience. While traditional peanut cookies are made by pulverizing peanuts with a mortar and pestle, I used peanut butter, condensing a 2-hour process into a mere 30 minutes. But beyond convenience, using natural peanut butter also gave the cookies a touch more richness and mouth-meltiness, owing to the peanut fat within the peanut butter. They were so fragrant straight out of the oven, I burnt my tongue as I popped one into my mouth.

So, weeks before the New Year, I’ve already had my fair share of peanut cookies, and am planning on baking more. Some will be gifted to friends, some to family, but most of them will probably end up in my belly. So, although this year’s festivities are a little different, at least these peanut cookies have brought about some semblance of new year cheer.

Peanut Cookies, with Peanut Butter

Makes 30-40 cookies

Ingredients

250g chunky peanut butter (non-hydrogenated PB (the kind that’s prone to splitting if left for too long) works best)
100g all-purpose flour
50g fine caster sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon peanut oil, or more
30-40 whole roasted peanuts, deshelled and deskinned.
1 egg, for eggwash

Directions

Pre-bake prep: Heat your oven to 350°F (fan-assisted convection). Meanwhile, line a baking tray with baking paper, or a silicon mat
Make the cookie dough: In a large bowl, stir together the peanut butter, all-purpose flour, caster sugar, salt, baking powder, and peanut oil with a spatula until the dough comes together and there are no streaks of flour. The dough should be thick but malleable in your hands. If it sticks to your hands, add a bit more peanut oil to it, one teaspoon at a time.
Ball up the dough: Divide out the dough into 12g portions. You should end up with around 35 pieces. Then, roll each piece of rough in the palms of your hands to shape it into little spherical balls, then place it on the lined baking tray, leaving at least a 1-inch gap between each ball. (They won’t expand too much but this is just to make sure there’s good airflow and the cookies get heated and baked evenly.) Get your roasted peanuts, and press one into the centre of each dough ball, squishing and flattening them a little.
Bake: For the eggwash, beat the egg in a bowl until there are no streaks of egg white. Then, brush a gently coating of eggwash on top of each cookie. Bake the cookies for 16-18 minutes, until they’re nicely bronzed, just a shade darker than the peanut butter you started out with. When done,
Eat: These peanut cookies are excellent warm out of the oven, but keeps for up to 2 weeks in an airtight container.