Mama Carries

It's more of a Malay Raya cookie but biskut mama karries is something I remember vividly from home. Strangely enough, most of the Malaysians here that I've plied with my mama carries have not heard of or had them before. I keep telling people about it but they never understand what I'm talking about. *pouts* It might just be that I like to describe them as mama carries (in my mind, a mama carries is a mama carries) but apparently, it's not much or a description nor is it very encouraging for people who haven't tried it before.

So, what is it? Well, one of my taste testers tells it as it is. 



"Eh? Mama Carries? What's that?"
*gives them an un-iced mama carries*
"Eh? Haiya, why didn't you say it's a butter cookie."

My reaction?

"Nooooooooo!!!! It's not a butter cookie!! It's Biskut Mama Karrie!!!"

Haha. I'm terribly disappointed with my fellow compatriots for not recognizing it but, I guess it IS a shortbread-ish butter cookie with a thin layer of icing.

The recipe is from Lilydvalley at Myresipi.com but it's in Malay so here's the English version:

Mama Carries
Makes 60-75 cookies

300g butter or margarine
375g plain flour
130g cornflour
100g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

For icing
1 egg white
100g icing sugar
1 tbsp cornflour

For decoration
chocolate emulco, cocoa powder or food colouring

Preheat oven to 150 C or 300 F.

Sift flour and cornflour together and set aside. Beat butter/margarine with icing sugar until light and fluffy before adding vanilla essence. Add flour to the mixture in small batches until it becomes a soft dough. Roll out and cut with cookie cutters.

Ice the cookies and use a toothpick to swirl designs onto the icing. Bake for 20 - 30 mins using the only the bottom heating element so that the icing doesn't brown. *

For the icing, beat egg white in a clean bowl until it peaks. Add in icing sugar and cornflour and mix til combined. Set aside about 1 tbsp of icing and mix it with the colouring/emulco/cocoa powder. Ice cookies and swirl coloured designs on with a toothpick.

* For this part, I just baked the cookies without the icing and iced them after they were baked. The icing dries on it's own if left to air dry or you can let them dry in the residual heat of your oven once you're done baking.

~ My sister initially told me that they were too sweet when she popped one into her mouth before the icing dried. She said that it does taste a lot better (not as sweet) the next day.

All packed up and ready to go :)