Chinese tea cookies usually go sweet; this one flips the register with Comte, salt and a full three scallions, held together by lard rather than butter, which is what makes the crumb shattering rather than creamy. The dough is mixed as little as possible — the cheese and scallion go in by cut-and-fold after the base comes together, so the streaks stay visible.
Chinese bakery · Cookies
Savoury Comte and Scallion Tea Cookies With a Buttery Crumb
A lard-shortened sable dough studded with grated Comte and raw scallion is rolled into 30-gram balls, dented with a fingertip and baked until the edges set but the centres stay tender.
- Prep20 min
- Cook15 min
- Serves10
- LevelEasy
Ingredients
| 180 g | plain flour |
| 40 g | icing sugar |
| 75 g | lard |
| 15 g | Comte cheese , grated |
| 1 | egg , beaten |
| 3 | scallions , finely chopped |
| 3 g | salt |
| 2 g | baking powder |
| 1 g | baking soda |
Method
- Beat the egg, chop the scallions finely and grate the cheese.
- Stir the icing sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt through the flour until even.
- Make a well, add the lard and the egg, and work everything into coarse crumbs.
- Press the crumbs flat, scatter over the cheese and scallion, and bring the dough together with a cut-and-fold motion.
- Form the dough into a log and divide into 30 g pieces. Roll each into a ball.
- Heat the oven to 180C top heat and 170C bottom heat. Press a dent into the middle of each ball with a little finger.
- Bake 15 minutes, until the edges are set and just colouring.
- Cool on a rack before storing; they crisp as they cool.
Notes
- Lard is doing structural work here; butter changes both the crumb and the flavour and was not what the source baked.
- Cut-and-fold, never knead. A worked dough turns these from shattering to bready.
Ratios and technique checked against karen陌颜 on Douguo (咸法酪葱油茶饼). The method here is written by Stellaok; the photograph is the source kitchen's, credited on the image above and linked back to the page it came from. No recipe text is reproduced.