Nian Gao ( Lunar New Year Cake)

Hi guys, we are making Nin Gou today, which is a Lunar New Year cake. During Lunar New Year, we eat a lot of foods that also sound like auspicious sayings. So in this case, Nin Gou, the character Gou means cake, but it also sounds like another Chinese character that means to rise or to be higher. So essentially the idea is that if you eat this cake, you'll be on the up and up in the coming year. In this video, I'll be making a few modifications to Mama Lin's recipe, and I know she'll have a lot of opinions about that, but whatever. If you can't find this type of sugar, use dark brown sugar instead. Bring the water to boil. You can also speed up the process slightly by snapping the sugar slabs first before boiling the water. Because the syrup is very hot, my mom usually lets it cool for 15-20 minutes. I actually think it's better to add coconut milk to the syrup to speed up the cooling process. While we're here, might as well add all the other liquid ingredients. Mama Lin uses Gan Soi to deepen the color of the Nin Gou. This is optional, but you can see in the photo what a difference the Gan Soi makes to the color of the cake. Add a bit of vegetable oil or any neutral oil. For the dry ingredients, you need glutinous rice flour. Note that this is different from rice flour. Glutinous rice flour will give the Nin Gou its characteristic soft and chewy texture. My mom doesn't usually do this, but I like adding ground ginger to give the Nin Gou more flavor. I find the Nin Gou quite plain otherwise. Add a pinch of salt. Stir the batter for several minutes. Grease a 9-inch cake pan with oil. Pour the batter through a fine mesh strainer to get rid of the lumps of flour. My mom strains the batter into the cake pan directly, but I like straining it into a bowl. For some reason, I usually get more flour lumps than my mom does and it's easier to press them out over a bowl. The metal used for cake pans can often vary in thickness. The cake pan on the right is slightly thinner, so the cake pan on the left I like to tap the cake pan a few times on the counter to get rid of any air bubbles. Place the cake on a steaming rack and steam the cake over medium heat for 50 minutes to an hour. The trickiest part about this recipe is figuring out the right level of heat and amount of water to steam the cake. When I steamed the Nin Gou on high heat and used slightly too much water, the cake was overheated, causing deep creases to form on the cake. The cake will look a little better the next day and it still tastes fine. Conversely, when I used less water and reduced the heat to medium-low, the cake was dry and undercooked. You can see how pale it is and how the edges are very dry. There just wasn't enough steam inside the wok. When I'm filling the wok with water, I usually leave about a half inch gap between the water line and the top of the steaming rack. As you're steaming the Nin Gou, you should see small wisps of smoke coming out from the sides of the wok lid. To test the cake for doneness, my mom sticks a chopstick into the cake. If the batter still looks a bit opaque and it's really soft, it's likely not ready yet. You want the inside to look golden and almost translucent. Add a Hong Zhou, or red date, in the center for decoration and to cover up the hole made with the chopstick. We don't usually eat this cake fresh. We use the Nin Gou to decorate the house for a few days before slicing into it and pan-frying in some oil. I usually leave it out in room temperature for a day or two before refrigerating it. Some people like to dip the Nin Gou in some egg to give the cake savory flavor. So the reason why I like pan-frying this is because the surface is blistered so it gives a little bit of a crunchy texture. And then it's soft in the middle. And I love adding the ginger powder in there because there's more to the flavor of the cake as opposed to just brown sugar and water and a little bit of coconut milk. So I really, really like this version. Alright, that's it. Hope you guys enjoyed the video. Don't forget to hit like and subscribe to my channel.