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Showing posts with the label Chinese festival food

Baked peanut Dumplings (油角)

The Chinese New Year is almost here, and now I'd want to share these Gok Zai (油角) , or Cantonese sweet dumplings, with you all. They have a crispy exterior and are frequently stuffed with sugar, peanuts, and sesame seeds. People will drool just by looking at it. It's nutty, aromatic, and crispy. The traditional method of making this peanut dumpling is deep frying, but I would like to share a baking method for this recipe.   The appearance of these dumplings is like a mini curry puff. However, it looks like a little plump coin purse from a different perspective– it symbolizes the fuller, the better, for a prosperous New Year! When you make the dumpling dough, make sure do not over mix the dough. Simply work all the ingredients together until they are soft and smooth. That is why I make the dough by hand to avoid over mixing. Aside from that, I like to cut my butter into small cubes as this makes it much easier to blend it into the flour mixture.  Once the dough is made, set as

Yam Bean Curd Rolls (芋头腐皮卷)

Do you enjoy eating bean curd rolls? A delicious dim sum dish was served at the restaurant. A mixture of ground pork and other ingredients are filled into the sweet, soft bean curd skin, which is then covered in a creamy, mild sauce. This is a dish that my mother-in-law likes to make for Chinese New Year. Her recipe is different from the dim sum restaurant which is not coated with any thick sauce. Typically, a mixture of ground pork, shrimp, and other ingredients makes up the filling. Usually, she would shape the bean curd rolls, steam them, and store them in the freezer. Place it in the fridge the night before New Year's Eve and allow it to defrost. After that, remove it from the refrigerator and leave it for around half an hour at room temperature. The customary way is to deep fry them and serve them with a dip of chilli sauce. Sometimes I make it as a vegetarian bean curd roll for my brother. I'm using yam instead of pork filling. But today, I want to combine some of the

Dragon Fruit Jelly Mooncakes (火龙果燕菜月饼)

Tired of traditional mooncakes? Why not try this agar-agar jelly dragon fruit mooncake that has egg yolk in it? It is cold and pleasant. The cool part is that baking is not necessary.  Fruit season is currently in full swing, and prices are reasonably low as well. It now costs Rm9 per kg instead of Rm15 per kg. It's an excellent deal.   I started to think about alternative ways to consume its remarkable beauty and taste besides as a fruit. The Mid-Autumn Festival will take place in less than a month, so this jelly dragon fruit mooncake is ideal. The technique of making agar-agar mooncakes is simple, but the egg yolk that appears when I demold and slice the jelly mooncake always surprises me. I highly recommend mooncakes with egg yolks since they are more attractive.  These jelly mooncakes are made up of three components which are the egg yolk, the filling, and the skin layer.  Let us get all the ingredients to hand to make this refreshing dragon fruit jelly mooncakes.   I

Red Tortoise cake (Ang Ku Kueh)

  This red tortoise cake is something that I think everyone has heard of and has probably used in worship. The Hokkien dialect "Ang Ku Kueh" is where the name "red tortoise cake" or "Hong Gui Kueh" originates. The primary component is glutinous rice, which is coloured and wrapped with your preferred cooked fillings. Usually, either mung beans or peanuts are used as the filler. Banana leaves are always used to line the bottom. In the old days, folks would typically grind glutinous rice pulp in a stone mill. But now is very convenient to use store-bought glutinous rice flour to prepare it.   It is much easier, just pour boiling water into the flour. I am sharing two flavours of Ang Ku Kueh, which are sweet potatoes and pumpkin flavour. To make the cake's skin, I combined glutinous rice flour with mashed purple sweet potatoes and pumpkin respectively. In other words, rather than being red, the natural colour of my Ang Ku Kueh is purple and yellow. The

Sweet Potato Mochi Tangyuan (番薯奶黄糯米糍汤圆)

Let's make sweet glutinous rice balls this time after I previously shared salty glutinous rice balls which were focused on the soup base.   And the exterior and filling of these sweet glutinous rice balls are the main attractions. These glutinous rice balls are distinctive from others since they are made with flavorful sweet potatoes. The custard filling is wrapped in a glutinous rice ball, which is not only distinctive in form but also incredibly eye-catching. Glutinous rice balls are made of glutinous rice and have a high viscosity, which makes them difficult to digest for some people. This mochi tangyuan is using more sweet potatoes and less glutinous rice flour. This recipe is something like making mochi.   Making this mochi tangyuan with the kids is a delightful project since you may mould and fill the rice balls with your own paste. I combined mashed orange, purple, and yellow sweet potatoes with glutinous flour to make the rice ball. Different varieties of potatoes absor

Salty Glutinous Rice Balls(咸汤圆)

On the night of the winter solstice, every household is having dinner with their family members. Just like the Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival, make dumplings, make glutinous rice balls, and have a big meal. It is implying reunion and happiness for the whole family. It's customary to have glutinous rice balls (Tangyuan 汤圆 ) on the winter solstice. Tangyuan is a must-have food for the winter solstice. It is a round dessert made of glutinous rice flour. There is a folk saying that “you will be one year older after eating glutinous rice balls”. Even restaurants also serve glutinous rice balls as a promotional menu on that day.   On the dining table, Cantonese treat sweet glutinous rice balls seem to dominate.   Both of my parents are Cantonese, yet my mother never makes sweet "tangyuan" on this day; instead, she always makes a pot of salty glutinous rice balls. The filling is not wrapped in glutinous rice balls, but glutinous rice is rolled into balls and bo

Pastry thousand layers mooncake

I adore this flaky spiral layer’s mooncake the most out of all mooncake varieties. After eating, you will not soon forget about the buttery flavour of the puff pastry skin, which melts on your lips, and the sweet but not greasy paste filling encased in salted egg yolk. I grew up eating traditional mooncakes with sweetened lotus filling. I have never heard of mooncake with a thousand spiral layers. I have no idea how it came to be, but I think the inspiration was from the traditional Teochew mooncake, which has a disc-like shape and is frequently "marked" with a red stamp on top of the cake.   And this spiral thousand-layer mooncake also makes me think of Singapore's well-known spiral curry puff, which needs to make two different doughs to wrap the filling. Many people adore puff pastry with a crisp texture. Even though all you need to make puff pastry is flour, water, butter, sugar, etc., Is it difficult to make this puff pastry mooncake? The recipe for this pastry laye