Recipe: Nestum Cereal Cookies

Most of us would know about this little tin of goodness. In the mornings, it makes for a quick but delicious breakfast drink and in the afternoons, a great pick-me-up.

It is also used in cereal prawns, one of my all-time favourite tze char dishes! While people go for the prawns, I can usually be seen scooping up spoonful after spoonful of cereal onto my plate. I suppose it's too fragrant to resist.

This versatile cereal can also be used in baking. I think the last time I had some nestum cereal cookies was during Chinese New Year this year when my mum bought some. I forgot how much I loved it as a kid. So when I came across the recipe, I knew I had to give it a go, and that's exactly what I did.

You'll need the following ingredients:

125g Butter - my trusted, always-got-offer brand *aunty mode*.

1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract.

3/4 tsp Ground Cinnamon.

1/4 cup Baking Chocolate Chips (I added 1/4 on top of that :)).

And of course, our Star Ingredient, 2 whole cups of Nestum Cereal.

On top of those, you'll also need 1/3 cup of Brown Sugar, 1 Egg, 3/4 cup Plain Flour, 1/2 tsp Salt and 1/2 tsp Baking Soda. Now the ingredients (excluding the butter) are measured in cups, which annoys the crap out of me *anal baker* since I love weighing my ingredients on a scale to the last decimal place. But it's okay, anything for these babies.

So what you need to do first is to pre-heat your oven to 175 deg. Then line your baking trays with parchment paper.

Beat your butter and sugar until light, like...

...this.

Then add in your vanilla and the egg. Now don't be confused, we are definitely making cookies and not tau huey. At this point, the mixture will curdle, but fear not, because flour is here to the rescue!

In a separate bowl, sift your flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon together. Then fold the sifted ingredients into the butter mixture (yes take it off the electric mixer, time to flex those muscles).

Lastly, you can now add in the nestum cereal and chocolate chips. Mix them all until fully incorporated.

It may seem like there's too much cereal (isn't that a good thing?), but just carry on mixing, trust me, until you get...

...this! The mixture smells really good at this point, but really, resist the temptation to put your finger in it to taste it. It's just about to get better.

I shaped them using a 1/8 cup, which turned out slightly bigger than I intended it to be. But it's okay, some people like their cookies thick and chunky, right?

So while these babies bake, I...

-sigh- ...do my cleaning up. 

About 28 minutes later... they don't look huge here, but they really are quite massive.

So with my last batch, I decided to switch to using a 1 tbsp measurement, and it turned out perfect. :)

My yield using a 1/8 cup measure is approximately 21, and the baking time 28 minutes.
For the 1 tbsp measure, my yield is about 42, with a baking time of 17 minutes.

I haven't tried them yet, but I think they're going to taste great since they smell so good! Afterall, you can't go wrong with cereal and chocolate, right?

*taste update* Well, I had a taste of the cookies this morning, and while they tasted great, it wasn't exactly the taste I was looking for :( But it's okay, I'll keep searching for other recipes and keep trying. Stay tuned for more nestum cereal cookie updates!