Hari Raya preparations

Every year I will make it a point to bake some cookies, no matter if they don't look or taste nice (but apparently they taste very nice according to reviews) and I will make one type of rendang. It could be chicken or beef or sometime both.

This year with my brand new kitchen, of course I have to keep up my own tradition!

For cookies I don't make the usual raya cookies. Simply because I don't know how and they look too complicated! Except for last year I made the almond London. So this year I decided to make the old school butter cookie and prenup butter cookie with choc chip.

So here are the photos! 

All set up and ready to go

The cook dough for the butter cookies. Dead easy! 

Then I had to freeze it so it gets firmer and easier to handle. I chose to cut them I to pieces rather than roll it out and use a cookie cutter. I do t have a rolling pin.

As here it is! All set to go into the oven

Next is the peanut butter and choc chip cookies

These turned out yummy!

I a solute la love rendang tok. Usually we would buy from the pasar tani cos they have the best ones.  Tu it gets more and more expe site each year! I think last year was RM80 per kg! Too much to pay. So I decided to attempt to make my own this year. I got the recipe from a recipe book by Betty Saw. It has all the popular Malaysian dishes according to state. Looking at her rendang tok recipe, it's so simple! But cooking time is a long time. The ingredients are not too many or difficult to find either. I got all I needed at the TTDI market. 

Here are my brag photos

The spices required. As you can see they are really cheap!

The grounded spices and chilli and the onions, garlic and ginger. They are all used to marinate the beef

All mixed up

In goes the beef and santan. Must marinate for 2 hours! 

2.5 hours later on the stove. And that's it! Mix, marinate and boil!

As I was fasting I could only taste it after buka puasa. An it tasted just fine! But according to my mum it's a bit too salty and that I should add some sugar. Ok next round. I probably make some again on Wednesday the day before Raya. Cos the above is only 1.5 kg. I gave my mum almost half and I saved some for the MIL. Would like some for my own consumption at home.

Oh and I also might like to add that for the above 1.5 kg of rendang tok, I had to use 5 coconuts of santan and 1 coconut of kerisik. And yes it is VERY fattening!