26-02 FLAVOR OF THE MONTH: CHINESE FIVE SPICE
Part of my cookie series. This is for February.
Read about the introduction and idea of this project in the inaugural post.
Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year) started in late February of this year, which was the inspiration for the month's flavor:
FIVE SPICE, or more commonly known as, Chinese five spice.
From the Wikipedia page:
Five-spice powder (Chinese: 五香粉; pinyin: wǔxiāng fěn) is a spice mixture of five or more spices—commonly star anise, cloves, Chinese cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, and fennel seeds—used predominantly in almost all branches of Chinese cuisine. The five flavors of the spices reflect the five traditional Chinese elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) and flavors (sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and savory).
That last part is so cool! I didn't know that.
Five-spice powder is a rub that's used for savory dishes. When I told my Taiwanese language partner about my experiment, she raised an eyebrow. "Do you think it will taste good?" she asked.
Let's find out.
I figured since salt isn't one of the spices, then it shouldn't turn the cookie into a salty cookie or anything like that. (Although... Salty cookies? Maybe??)
But first:
Adding dried vs. wet ingredients to an existing recipe
In the earl grey experiment, I wondered how to cook with tea leave. Does one add the tea leaves to the dry ingredients, since tea leaves are dry? But because tea is usually brewed, the logical answer to this was to cook/brew the tea leaves in the melted butter.
For dry ingredients, one can simply add the desired amount to the mixing bowl (the recipe usually mixes the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another; then you add the mixed dry ingredients to the wet one).
I'm using this logic: First determining whether the additional flavor would be better enhanced while cooking in the butter (i.e., with tea leaves), or whether it would be easier to treat it like another dry ingredient (i.e., matcha powder). Because while matcha is also tea, mixing that into cooked butter sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Trial #1
Note: I'm not sure if I will keep up with two trials per month because that's a whole lot of cookies (and not enough exercising).
I bought a new bag of five-spice powder for this recipe. I had a tiny bottle that lasted me for years, which I finally ran out of a few months ago.
I usually like to add some sort of chocolate that I believe would pair well with the flavor.*
*I think five-spice cookies would pair really well with WALNUTS or ALMONDS mixed in. But I hate eating nuts. I don't like the mouthfeel. So if anyone does try this, let me know if my theory worked out!
The wet dough was dark brown but lightened up a lot once it was fully baked.
I like to bake my cookies on two separate trays. I have one wire rack, which I line with baking paper. That goes above the baking tray, which is usually on the last rung in the oven. I now know that the top tray always produces a more crinkly effect, while the bottom tray is smooth.
Crinkled cookies.
Smooth cookies.
Once you bite into it, the texture is the same. It's not dry at all, thanks to the generous amount of butter.
Taste test
Verdict: ★★★½
The cinnamon flavor goes far, so it ended up tasting like a milder gingerbread cookie, even though there's no ginger in this at all. Gingerbread and cinnamon aren't my favorite things, which is why this gets 3.5 stars. You can't really taste the other flavors, which is probably why five-spice is better used in savory stuff, as salt might bring out more of the anise and cloves.
So it was delightful but not mindblowingly amazing like earl grey, and Daniel said it was missing chocolate. Which brings us to trial #2.
Trial #2
For my Spring Festival party, I thought it was fitting to bake these again for my friends to try, but this time, I added 70% dark chocolate.
These just look like regular chocolate chip cookies.
My friends each ate like 3-4 cookies, so they liked it. N commented that it tasted like Lebkuchen, which is the German version of the gingerbread cookie. It tastes great with chocolate, but then the intricacies of the five spice flavors are lost, because the chocolate is so overpowering.
Until next time
I'll be baking March's cookie this week. The flavor is MINT CHOCOLATE, so I'll be doing two trials:
- Using mint leaves only
- Using mint essence (e.g. like a liquid or something)
Oh, and one more thing from the five spice Wikipedia article:
The addition of eight other spices creates thirteen-spice powder [zh] (十三香), which is used less commonly.
That's wild, but color me intrigued. I'll note it down for Spring Festival 2027.