Osmanthas apricot crackies

Following the previous rose and cranberries crackies I made, I was also intrigued by the osmanthas crackies I saw alongside the rose ones. Osmanthas flowers? Should be a breeze to get in sunny Singapore. Or so I thought. It took me a while, but I did eventually managed to find them at Chinatown (and then ended up with a surplus as two other people in the household also bought them for me cos I mentioned that I was looking for 'em).

And so, I revisited the recipe to bake up some osmanthas crackies. As the rose one added dried cranberries, I thought that it would be lovely to add up some dried fruit in these osmanthas crackies too. I went ahead, using colours as a theme, and used dried apricots, as I thought they should complement the floral osmanthas notes. I followed the recipe, just replacing the same amount of dried roses to dried osmanthas and using only plain water (no essence cos I couldn't think of what other flavour would mesh well with osmanthas and apricot).

Osmanthas and apricot crackies

Dried osmanthas buds

I baked up a batch of rose and cranberries crackies too cos I thought they make a good snack when I am at work craving something sweet. They are not overtly sweet and somehow, I feel less guilty snacking on these crackies than other regular cookies. Munch munch munch.

A cuppa to go along with your cookies?

I must say these cookies are one of my favourites. An alternative to my constant crave (double chocolate chip cookies), these provide a sweet kick without being too obvious. I still prefer the rose to the osmanthas ones though it's good to bake both to try and also, to have two flavours to alternate snacking on. Heh. They are crispy and stay fresh in their containers for quite a while, so no worries about them going stale or whatnot. Sis and I snacked on them for two weeks or so, and even then they tasted as good as fresh.

Now that I've plenty of osmanthas flowers, I'm wondering what else can I do with them. I've already tried using them in cooking - steaming a piece of cod fish with some of the flowers (together with some wolfberries and red dates) and the fish tasted really good! Hmmm, perhaps a jelly or something next? :)