For dessert with a Chinese New Year theme, it only seemed right to go for Nian Gao – glutinous rice cake. This dish is usually served at Chinese New Year for good luck. China Highlights has a lot of information on the significance of this cake, as well as the best ways to serve it!
This dish only required 3 ingredients (we added a little bit of vanilla for our own taste). The type of flour for this dish is the most important part – not just any rice flour will do! Glutinous rice flour (also known as sticky rice flour or sweet rice flour) is essential. We were able to purchase this from Exotica in Swansea, but it should be available in any world food store.
The mixture for this cake was very interesting. The sifted flour and water mixture formed a soft paste consistency. Once the brown sugar was added, it very quickly became a runny texture before our eyes! Overall this preparation step was very straightforward and took no time at all.
We poured the mixture into prepped ramekins. Traditionally these are lined with banana leaves, but we had to make do with 2-3 layers of greaseproof paper. These ramekins were then steamed for 10 hours. Yep, 10 hours!
This beautiful sticky cake was the result of a whole day of nursing the steamer, and we think it came out well! We just added some halved glace cherries to the centre of the cake to make it look more like the real thing!
Let us know on our social media channels if you give this a go!
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