Traditional Handmade Ang Ku Kueh

Jian dui is a type of fried Chinese pastry made from glutinous rice flour. The pastry is coated with sesame seeds on the outside and is crisp and chewy. Inside the pastry is a large hollow, caused by the expansion of the dough.The hollow of the pastry is filled with a filling usually consisting of lotus paste (蓮蓉), or alternatively sweet black bean paste (hei dousha, 黑豆沙), or less commonly red bean paste (hong dousha, 紅豆沙).Depending on the region and cultural area, jian dui are known as matuan (麻糰) in northern China, ma yuan (麻圆) in northeast China, and zhen dai (珍袋) in Hainan. In American Chinese restaurants and pastry shops, they are known as Sesame Seed Balls.[1] They are also sometimes referred to as zhimaqiu (芝麻球), which translates to sesame balls in English.

Niangao (nin gou in Cantonese), sometimes translated as year cake or Chinese New Year’s cake, is a food prepared from glutinous rice and consumed in Chinese cuisine. While it can be eaten all year round, traditionally it is most popular during Chinese New Year. It is also traditionally eaten during the Duanwu Festival. It is considered good luck to eat nian gao during this time, because “nian gao” is a homonym for “higher year.” The Chinese word 粘 (nián), meaning “sticky”, is identical in sound to 年, meaning “year”, and the word 糕 (gāo), meaning “cake” is identical in sound to 高, meaning “high or tall”. As such, eating nian gao has the symbolism of raising oneself taller in each coming year (年年高升 niánnián gāoshēng). It is also known as a rice cake. This sticky sweet snack was believed to be an offering to the Kitchen God, with the aim that his mouth will be stuck with the sticky cake, so that he can’t badmouth the human family in front of the Jade Emperor.

Fa gao (simplified Chinese: 发糕; traditional Chinese: 發粿; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: huat-kué) is a Chinese cupcake-like pastry, most commonly consumed on the Chinese new year, that is made of flour (usually rice flour), leavening (traditionally yeast, but can be chemical leavening), sugar or another sweetener, steamed (instead of baked), until the top splits into a characteristic “split top” of four segments. The batter is typically left to rest for fermentation prior to being steam-cooked.The name of the cake is a pun, as “fa” means both “prosperity” and “raised (leavened)”, so “fa gao” means both “prosperity cake” and “raised (leavened) cake”. These cakes, when used to encourage prosperity in the new year, are often dyed bright colors.