Year of the Dragon Cookies Bag

As the Chinese Lunar Year of the Dragon approaches, our family tradition is to prepare scores of bags of goodies to 回礼 or give “Reciprocal Gifts". As each branches of our extended family and family friends arrive to present gifts of red packets or food to the Matriarch of the family, she will 回礼 and give them a bag of goodies ......

This year we decided not to make any cakes but to have  four types of cookies and two oranges in the goodies bags .....

Meanwhile, we try to cope with the deluge of food heading our way..... :-)

Preparing for Year of the Dragon

The Lunar New Year of 2012 is the year of the Dragon or Chinese Year 4709 or 4649 depending on who is counting :-) It is only about 9 weeks away. 

Every year, on behalf of my mum, we will make cookies for distribution to relatives and friends. We need to decide what cookies we should have  and the following four met her and our approval for taste and texture.

Final selections .......

My mum likes strong warm colours like pink or red for Lunar New Year. So her choice is to change the green mint chocolate to the pink strawberry chocolate! We may add some decors like silver /gold dragees or hundreds-thousands to the other cookies.

Baking in our kitchens will begin in earnest after Christmas. usually we include one canister each of the four varieties in the gift pack. Each year, we have to bake some or more forty sets :-O