Cookbook Review: 108 Asian Cookies

Welcome to my March cookbook review. Yes, I’m aware it’s April. This one is worth the wait, though!

The subject of this month’s cookbook review is 108 Asian Cookies: Not-Too-Sweet Treats from a Third-Culture Kitchen by Kat Lieu. 108 Asian Cookies came out late last year, and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been intrigued by the buzz.

As someone who’s written a couple of cookbooks herself, I can tell you first-hand how hard it is to come up with a unique idea for a cookbook. It’s really hard! So… Asian cookie recipes?? Interesting! Sign me up!

First off, I should probably acknowledge that I’m not even a little bit Asian. My roots are in the UK on my dad’s side, and from Eastern Europe on my mom’s. But I was born in, and live in, Vancouver, which has a massive Asian population. Richmond, in fact, one of the suburbs of Vancouver, is around 75% Asian, making it the highest Asian populated city in North America. An equally short drive from house puts me in the Punjabi Market, where there’s a high population of South Asians, and I regularly shop at T&T, as well as the Japanese and Filipino (hello, 88!) markets.

The author, Kat Lieu, was born in Canada. Montreal, to be precise. So when I picked up this book, and half expected to be somewhat intimidated by it, I was surprised to find that the author and I spoke a similar language. Kat took the cookies she grew up with in Canada, and infused them with her Asian heritage, giving us things like snickerdoodles, Nanaimo Bars, chocolate chip cookies, blondies, brownies, rice krispy squares… but with an Asian twist. And because I live in Vancouver, my fridge and cupboards are full of these ingredients: pandan, ube, miso, gojujang… so the entire experience wasn’t as unfamiliar as I’d been expecting.

First off, as with any cookbook, we eat with our eyes, so food photography is super important. The photos and styling here are great. Beautiful lighting, beautiful styling, and not too “perfect,” which is just how I like it. Recipes need to look accessible, unless you’re going to just be using this for a coffee table book, in which case, fill your boots.

I should say that the recipes are what I would term “pan-Asian,” meaning that inspiration is pulled not just from China, but from Japan, Korea, the Philippines and the Indian diaspora.

This is a hefty book, around 400 pages, and it’s organized into sections like “Cookies with a Kick,” “Umami,” “Holiday Cookies,” “Fusions,” and then some more traditional chapters like “Cookie Box Essentials,” and “Brownies, Blondies & Bars.”

With 108 recipes to try, it was a tough job narrowing it down to the the few that I had the time to make for this review, but I did make four recipes:

• Snickerdoodles with 5 Spice
• One-Bowl Rice Cake Bars or Cookies (Chapssaltteok)
• Pandan, Coconut & Cardamom Ladoo
• Ube Halaya Brownies

Snickerdoodles are a cookie I grew up with. My mom made them all the time, so it’s a sentimental favourite for me. Replacing (or augmenting) the heavy cinnamon in the cookie with 5 Spice makes a ton of sense, as cinnamon is one of the titular “five spices.” I also love star anise, so that was a welcome addition to this one as well. I’m not sure if I got a bum package of 5 spice (though I did get the Natural World brand from the Asian market), but I wanted a tiny bit more kick from this one.

One-Bowl Rice Cake Bars or Cookies (Chapssaltteok): there aren’t a ton of vegan recipes here, but there are a few, and I had to try at least one. This recipe was probably the one I had the least amount of previous knowledge of, I wasn’t totally sure what to expect. Made with glutenous rice flour (which is ironically gluten free), this was a super easy recipe that came together quickly. I liked that you could customize it with whatever dried fruits and nuts you had on hand (I used pistachios and cranberries), and I liked the addition of chocolate. The final texture of the bar was chewy, almost like mochi. This is a Korean-inspired recipe, which makes a ton of sense, because you may be familiar with the word “tteok” as I am, by the dish made with rice cakes in the spicy sauce, tteokbokki.

Pandan, Coconut & Cardamom Ladoo. First, confession. I’ve never made ladoo. I’ve certainly eaten it, along with barfi and gulab jamun, and jalebis. I liked how this one combined Pandan (which is more Thai/Filipino) with a traditionally South Asian recipe. This recipe was by far the sweetest of the four I tried, but I liked the coconut and the cardamom together.

Ube Halaya Brownies. Did I save the best for last? Yes I did. Am I biased because I love ube? Also yes. Made with white chocolate, these brownies were so good. They incorporated ube in two ways: both with ube jam and also with the flavouring/essence. They also include coconut which makes for a nice texture. I really liked these ones a lot.

In terms of difficulty, none of the recipes I made were overly complicated. A couple were a little fiddly, like the ladoo, which you need to allow to cool and then roll, but nothing really super hard. However, I didn’t pick some of the more complicated recipes. I wanted to make the Dreams of Montreal Nanaimo Bars (filling is made with Pandan), Crazy Rich Billionaire’s Shortbread or the Butterfly Pea Madelines, but in the interest of time, I steered away from these slightly more time-consuming recipes.

I would say, if someone was a beginning baker or was unfamiliar with some of these flavours and ingredients, they may find it a bit intimidating. Similarly, if you live in a small town, or you don’t have much of an Asian population, meaning you don’t have Asian markets, you might have a tough time finding some of the ingredients.

One thing I noticed about these recipes and found really interesting was that almost none of the recipes called for salt. Instead, each one called for a teaspoon of miso paste. While I’m no stranger to adding miso to sweet recipes, this is something I’ll likely be continuing to do more of in the future.

All-in-all, I really enjoyed this cookbook. I loved that I had a point of reference with it, but also that it introduced me to new things. I think this is the really precipitous balance any cookbook author is trying to strike: accessibility with learning something new. And I think 108 Asian Cookies: Not-Too-Sweet Treats from a Third-Culture Kitchen by Kat Lieu does a good job of striking that balance.