Chinatown Holiday Baking Supply Shop Finder: Almond Cookies

San Francisco's Chinatown has two holiday seasons stacked close together. December brings strings of lights over Grant Avenue and families shopping for Christmas parties, and only a few weeks later the neighborhood turns red and gold for Lunar New Year. For a home baker, that overlap is a gift. The kitchenware shops are already stocked with steamers and molds, the grocers on Stockton Street fill their shelves with candied fruit, sesame and nuts, and the bakeries turn out trays of almond cookies and egg tarts that set the standard you will be measuring your own batch against. If your holiday baking leans toward Chinese treats, or you simply want tools that last a lifetime, this is the most rewarding few blocks in the city to explore.

Grant Avenue is where most visitors start, and for baking tools it earns that attention. Mixed in among the souvenir shops are kitchenware stores that have been outfitting family kitchens for generations, packed floor to ceiling with woks, cleavers, clay pots and stacks of bamboo steamers in every diameter. For holiday baking, the steamer is the key purchase. A two tier bamboo set that fits over your widest pot will handle steamed sponge cake, buns and sticky rice cakes, and the bamboo absorbs condensation so the tops stay smooth instead of soggy. Line each tier with parchment punched with holes, or with cabbage leaves the way many grandmothers do.

Carved wooden molds are the other treasure here. They are traditionally used for mooncakes and for pressed cookies, and they turn a simple dough into a patterned gift with almost no extra effort. Choose a mold with deep, clean carving, dust it with flour before every press, and tap it firmly on the counter to release the dough. They also make lovely wall decorations once the baking season ends.

When the tools are sorted, walk one block west to Stockton Street, where the neighborhood does its everyday grocery shopping. The sidewalks are busier and more local, the produce is piled high, and the grocers carry the pantry side of holiday baking in depth. Look for blanched almonds and almond flour, toasted sesame seeds, lard for flaky Chinese pastry, glutinous rice flour, brown slab sugar and rock sugar, and candied fruits like winter melon, lotus seeds and kumquats that appear in the weeks before New Year. Dried goods stores along the street are good for dried longan, red dates and goji berries, which make a warming tea to drink alongside the cookies.

Go in the morning on a weekday if you can. Stockton Street is a working market, and by midday on a weekend the crowd moves slowly. Morning is also when the produce is freshest and shopkeepers have more time to answer questions about which sugar or flour their customers use.

Chinese almond cookies are the classic holiday bake of the neighborhood, crumbly and rich with a single almond pressed into the top. The texture comes from fat, and traditional recipes use lard, which gives a sandy, melt in the mouth crumb that butter alone cannot match. A mix of lard and butter is a good compromise if you want a little dairy flavor. Almond extract does the heavy lifting on aroma, so add it sparingly and taste the dough before baking. Brush each cookie with beaten egg yolk for a golden shine, and press the whole almond in firmly so it does not pop out as the cookie spreads.

Pick up a box from one of the neighborhood bakeries before you start. Breaking one open and studying the crumb, the color and how thick it is gives you a clear target, and it is a delicious excuse to sit for a moment between errands.

Once you have the almond cookie down, the same pantry stretches into other treats. Walnut cookies use an almost identical dough with chopped walnuts folded in. Sesame balls need glutinous rice flour, brown sugar and a bag of white sesame seeds, plus a pot of oil for frying. Steamed sponge cake, light and eggy, needs nothing more than eggs, sugar, flour and that new bamboo steamer. For New Year, turnip cake and sticky rice cake are savory and sweet anchors of the table, and both depend on the flours and steamer you have already gathered.

Egg tarts deserve a mention too, since they are the pastry most visitors line up for in Chinatown. A home version needs two things you can gather here, a set of small fluted tart tins and either lard or a good shortening for the flaky crust. Fill the shells with a silky custard of egg, sugar and evaporated milk, and bake them only until the center still trembles slightly. Let them cool for a few minutes before lifting them out of the tins, and they will hold their shape for the trip to a party.

Chinatown packs many shops into a small area, and finding one particular item, such as a mold in a certain shape or a brand of lard, can mean ducking into a dozen doorways. In the Karpo APP you can tell Karpo what you plan to bake and that you are near Grant Avenue, and it will suggest nearby kitchenware shops, grocers and bakeries that fit that list, along with a tea house or park stop to pace the walk. It helps you plan the order so heavy groceries come at the end and fragile tools stay safely on top.

Bring a sturdy bag with a flat base for steamers and molds, and a second bag for groceries. Smaller shops often appreciate cash for modest purchases, so carry a little. The neighborhood sits on a steep slope, so plan to walk downhill with your heaviest bags, or take Muni from the Stockton Street station to avoid the climb. Portsmouth Square, a short walk from both main streets, is a good place to rest and repack. When you get home, wash new bamboo steamers in warm water and let them steam empty once before their first use, season wooden molds with a light coat of neutral oil, and keep lard chilled until you are ready to mix. Your almond cookies will carry a little of Chinatown's holiday spirit into every tin.