Making peanut crisp and walnut crisp pastries you'll never get enough of
Sick of mooncakes? Us too. That’s why two of our junior reporters went to learn how to make peanut crisp and walnut crisp pastries in Lai Chi Kok
Hong Kong isn’t just known for egg tarts and pineapple buns – one of the more traditional pastries out there are the good old fashioned peanut crisp and walnut crisp pastries. Two of our adventurous junior reporters took part in a baking class at Andy’s Workshop in Lai Chi Kok to find out how to make these tasty treats.
Peanut crisp pastry
We combined the peanut flour dough ingredients and set it aside in cling film. Then, we formed the dough into small balls, separating them into inner and outer layers. The outer layers we weighed out to 10g each, and the inner layers 7-8g.
We separated the filling mixture into six pieces, weighing around 19-21g each. We took an outer layer piece, and wrapped it around an inner layer dough ball, repeating this until all the pieces had been used.
Then the most difficult part: creating a crispy, flaky pastry by doing a simple pastry lamination. We did this by flattening out our dough balls with a rolling pin. Then, we folded the flattened pastry on itself three times from the top. After that, we turned it 90 degrees, and rolled it out again. And folded again! After we rolled that out, we filled it with our peanut filling, and shaped the resulting pastry into a peanut shape. Once we’d done that for all of our peanut crisp pastries, we popped them into the oven for 15 minutes at a 180C.
Ingredients:
To make the oily dough for the outside layer:
55g low gluten flour
35g butter
To make the peanut flour dough for the inside layer:
55g low gluten flour
35g butter
15g water
1g coffee powder
Combine, set aside in cling film
For the filling:
40g chopped peanuts
12g black sesame seeds
13g sunflower seeds
25g Xylitol
5g cake flour
12g peanut butter
5g water
10g blue agave syrup
Walnut crisp pastry
Like with the peanut crisp pastry, we formed the inner and outer layers of dough into six small balls.
The outer layers were weighed out at 14-15g each, and the inner layers weighed out at 7-8g. The filling mixture was also separated out into six pieces, each weighing around 14-16g. We went through the same process of wrapping the inner layers of dough with the layers of dough, and then laminating them by rolling them out and folding them over.
Then, we stuffed them full of filling and shaped them into walnut-looking pastries.
These, we popped into the oven for 22 minutes at 170C. Phew! It was hard work, but our pastries turned out absolutely delicious. The best thing about them? That we didn’t use any sugar for them. Healthy AND tasty? We’ll have six more please.
Ingredients:
To make the oily dough for the outside layer:
55g low gluten flour
35g butter
To make the walnut flour dough for the inside layer:
55g low gluten flour
35g butter
15g water
1g cocoa powder
Combine, set aside in cling film
For the filling:
A couple of handfuls of puréed blue dates
Walnuts
Sugar
Cake flour