Kuih Kapit or Love Letter is a type of festive cookies during Chinese New Year. This is my family recipe passed down from my grandmother. We will make this for Chinese New Year. And it has become a family tradition that all family members, aunties & uncles will come to help out. Also a gathering sessions for the family members. Those days we used to set up the bbq pit in front of our house and the production line starts. The head chef, the assistant chef, the helper to fold the cookies & arrange into metal tins, the fire controller - adding charcoal bits & fan off the ashes, others will be helper to serve cold drinks & lunch food.
Using only simple ingredients - sugar, egg, rice flour, fresh coconut milk & tapioca flour. Although this crispy & thin biscuit is time consuming to make & need a lot hard work & sweat, we still prefer to make them ourselves rather than store bought. Often we feel that store bought is too thick and not as delicious as homemade.
Although modern technology has been invented to replace many old tools and equipments, we still prefer to make this using the traditional old way. Until today, we still use to barbeque them using charcoal fire.
A truly nostalgic cny tradition and it's getting extinct slowly. That's why it's so pricey to purchase from outside nowadays because it really involved a lot of hard work, time & sweat.
Ingredients:
1/2 kg Rice Flour
18 Eggs
Fresh Coconut Milk from 2 Coconuts
600g Sugar
2.5oz Tapioca Flour
Tools needed:
Kuih Kapit / Love Letter mould
Charcoal
Some cooking oil to oil the mould
A butter knife
A brush - we DIY using a wooden chopsticks, wrapped in white cotton cloth & tied tightly using some sewing thread.
Step by Step (Batter Preparation):
1. Mix everything together in a pot. Crack eggs into smaller bowl before putting into the pot to prevent any spoilt/bad eggs. Otherwise you will spoil the whole pot of ingredients.
2. Wash & clean your hand. Use your hand to mix all the ingredients together till become a smooth batter.
3. Feel for any lumps and use hands to flatten it before mixing it into the batter.
4. Alternatively you may also use a spatula to find for any lumps.
This mixing part will easily need about 30mins at least. ( for a lumps free batter)
The BBQ Pit setting up area.
Basically this is the setup area.
Some bricks to level up the bbq pit - air circulates properly and charcoal burning steadily.
A wood place near the bbq pit - for the mould to sit properly
Some newspaper - to collect the burnt sides
A side table - for folding area & collecting cookies
Used carton box - for the chef to sit comfortably. Otherwise the heat from the bbq pit might transfer some heat to the floor
A hand-held fan - to fan the burning charcoal
Some charcoal bits - small to medium pieces will do.
Starting off to burn the charcoal and getting a stable flame. You just need some heat from the charcoal to cook the kuih kapit love letter & not fiery hot flaming fire.
Then we heat up the mould, once mould is hot, brush with some cooking oil on both inner sides of the mould. This step is important to prevent the kuih kapit love letter from sticking to the mould after that. Only need to do it once at the beginning of the process. Not everytime before putting batter.
After brushing oil, put back for a while to heat up the mould. Then it's ready to pour batter.
Now comes the real cooking part.
Use a ladle to scoop the batter and slowly pour from the top of the mould to fill up the whole surface.
Drip properly & extra batter will flow back into the pot.
Then put back on the bbq stove and let it cook slowly until light golden brown color.
(Below) - this is half cooked.
In between the cooking process (almost cook stage), if there is some extra burnt batter on the outside ring of the mould, use the knife to trim it off. This step is to keep the edges of every pieces clean & neat.
Ohh!! Look at the black kuih kapit. Reject.. Badly burnt!! You need to monitor closely every mould to prevent from burning black. What we do is normally we will arrange those newly refilled ones at the far right end while the other ends will be those almost cook (just keep pushing them to the left side). Open the mould when its almost cook to check the color. Bear in mind, do it quick. Opening too long will cause the cookie to turn cold & become harden.
This is cooked & ready to be remove from the mould. Just use your bare fingers or fingernails to peel off from the hot mould. Then quickly make 2 folds to make into triangle shape. Again, this need to be done quickly as cookie will gets cold & become harden, hence difficult to fold & will crack.
After folding, use a tin cover to weigh down and slightly pressed the bottom part of the kuih kapit. Normally we don't flatten the whole pieces, otherwise you will need to make a lot in order to fill up 1 can or tong.. We normally use those metal tongs (can).
Love the darken brown ones, it's more fragrant!!
Once completely cool down, store in airtight containers. Seal with tape on the sides of the tins.
Can be able to keep for 3-4 weeks until cny.
To be enjoy only when CNY comes.
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