Little flowers…

My missus made these…

…the other day. Some people call them kuih dahlia after the flower though I really do not see the resemblance.

I shared a photograph of them on Facebook and an old friend commented, “The good old sempret?” [SIC] Oh? I did not know it was thus called so I went and googled to see what I could find.

According to one website, kuih semperit is Malaysia’s answer to the Scottish butter cookie: it became known as semperit because the Malay chef mispronounced ‘shortbread’. Others point to Indonesia as its origin. It is usually shaped into either the dahlia flower pattern or round biscuits with a ridged, serrated surface. Another name for this biscuit is Biskut Bunga Dahlia.

Well, whatever it is called, it seems that it is very familiar to a lot of people, going all the way back to their childhood days. My cousin all the way in the UK remarked, “OMG! These are some of the cookies of my childhood days! My Mum used to make these as well,” and my blogger friend in Kuching had this to say, “My childhood cookies. I will bite the middle cherry first before taking the whole thing. Now hardly see people make, hardly get to enjoy it anymore.” Well, that is not  a problem in my case – my missus makes them every year!

Firstly, she made the dough and putting a bit at a time in a special pump, a small one, she pumped out the flowers…

I think each time, she was only able to pump three.

After that, she would put tiny cut bits of cherry in the middle of each flower…

Seeing that she had to do all these and at the same time, keep an eye on those trays that had gone into the oven, I chipped in to lend a hand and did this part for her.

Once done, the tray was ready to go into the oven…

She did manage to make quite a number of trays and thankfully, only one was a little overdone…

The biscuits were a little more tanned, especially at the bottom so she put those rejects aside and we could eat them right away. The rest were all placed nicely in airtight cookie jars to be kept till Chinese New Year.