365days2playWith Chinese New Year coming up in just half a month more, I get the feeling that many people are creaking out their old ovens and attempting to bake a cookie or two to celebrate the festivities. It’s definitely an excellent idea to bake your own CNY cookies because store bought cookies can never be as good as home made. For one, home made CNY cookies are made with love, and that’s an ingredient that money can’t buy!
I too, will be making some CNY cookies this year. (I hope it’s not another say only but never do type of thing again) I’m all set to make pineapple tarts, chocolate cookies and almond cookies this year. I’ve bought nearly all the ingredients already. Butter, check. Sugar, check. Flour, check. Only thing I still need is the pineapple. I’ve made the pineapple filling before a couple of years back. It’s not difficult, just a little time consuming. I heard that the Phoon Huat pineapple filling is just as good as making it yourself. I might have to resort to that if it comes to the crunch.
There are obviously many places to purchase those baking ingredients for your CNY goodies, such as Cold Storage, NTUC, Phoon Huat, Sun Lik etc. BUTTTT, if you have the time, you might want to hop to different stores for different ingredients! The savings can be substantial depending on whether you’re feeding your entire kampong / battalion, or just making some cookies for Instagram only.
This list is based on my memory and past experience, but it should be relatively accurate. Anyway these will be the places I will be going to for the following baking ingredients.
Giant
- Prima Plain Flour $2.50 — This is the standard price that I always keep in mind, because most likely, you will never find flour cheaper than $2.50 at a supermarket. Even when they tell you the flour is on discount, it is still $2.50 or higher!
Sheng Siong Supermarket (I shop at the Bedok branch)
- Hershey’s Cocoa Powder $4+ only! (Probably cheapest in whole of Singapore)
- Hershey’s Chocolate Baking Bars
- Plain Flour about $2 (This is not the Prima or the Bake King brand, I have not tried this flour before so I cannot attest to the brand) This is also the only place where I have seen 3 kg bags of flour. Normally you can only get 1kg bags of flour in most places.
- Sugar — Can’t remember the cost but it’s cheap. And you can get kgs of it!
Phoon Huat ( I shop at the Sims Avenue branch)
- Plain Flour / Cake Flour / Bread Flour RedMan brand — Less than $2.50 and therefore cheaper than any supermarket. Cheapest place to buy bread flour too, as Sheng Siong does not seem to have the cheap bread flour like they do for plain flour.
- Other ”exotic” flours like Pistacho flour, Almond flour, hazenut flour etc
- Butter $2.60 — The Gold Tree brand costs $2.60 but actually there is an Argentinian brand that is even cheaper but I usually go for the GoldTree brand coz that’s what I used in my baking school
- Cream $7 — One litre dairy cream for only $7!! Even though I can hardly ever finish 1 litre, it seems much better to buy this because 250 ml of cream in the supermarket already costs $4!
Geylang Lor 23, One Sims Lane, #01-10 Singapore 387355 (and various other locations)
Tel: 6846 7825
SunLik Trading Pte Ltd
- All manner of Valrhona Chocolate, shaved, chips, blocks, bar, powder. 1kg block costs about $40+.
33 Seah Street, Singapore 188389
Tel: 6338 0980
