Celebrate Chinese New Year with some Chinese cakes!

A cake is so often the focal point of a celebration – from wedding cakes to birthday cakes, Christenings and Christmas. Cake is seemingly fundamental to a party. It’d seem odd to have a party without a delicious cake to go with it.

In this blog article we’ll take a look at some delicious Chinese cakes for Chinese New Year which in 2014 lands on 31^st January.

Perhaps the most famous cake for Chinese New Year is called Nian Gao – this literally translates as sticky cake. However, ‘nian gao’ is actually homophonous with ‘higher year’ so eating this cake is seen as being auspicious and encourage you to be a better person each year.

The cake is made using Chinese brown sugar, gluttonous rice flour and Chinese dates (also known as jujubes) and is steamed (not baked).

The cake is extra sticky and gelatinous thanks to the rice flour. The recipe is simple and easy to make at home – even if you don’t have a steamer already.

Two other famous Chinese cakes are the mooncake and the egg tart.

The mooncake is traditionally eaten for the other large holiday in the Chinese calendar – the Mid-Autumn Festival (also sometimes called the Moon Festival). This cake is made with a sweet pastry completely encasing a filling made with red bean or lotus seed paste. There is also often an egg yolk in the middle – made to resemble the Moon.

Although it is tradition to eat mooncakes for this holiday, it has also become customary for them to be given as gifts to friends, family and business associates.

Another famous Chinese cake is the egg tart. These are an evolution of the traditional Portuguese or English egg custard tarts but are eaten warm and are not covered in nutmeg.  They are often served as part of dim sum and should be eaten straight away, not saved for the last course.

Other cakes that you might find in a Chinese bakery include cha siu bao (pork buns), cocktail buns (filled with a sweet coconut filling) and cream buns (a bun made from Chinese dough but filled with Western style cream).

Chinese cuisine features many delicious cakes and buns and you should be able to find easy recipes online or find a Chinese bakery in your local Chinatown.

If you need any celebration cakes including birthdays,Christenings, weddings and more – Dunn’s Bakery in north London have a fantastic selection and can even produce bespoke cakes for you.