Chinese New Year Cakes

It is the worst snow storm in the recent 20 years in this region today. Well, I basically just work from home today. Since it is Chinese new year tomorrow (Feb 7, 2008), I start to make some special cakes for the Chinese new year. The first one is "Fa"-cake. It is more like the Chinese version of cupcake. Or we should call it "bowlcake" since the cake mixture is put in the bowl and steamed until it is done. Fa-cake is made of rice flour, brown sugar and baking powder. Steam the mix until they are solid. It is very important to have the beautiful cracks on the top of the cake since it means that the career/finance of the family members will be going up in this coming new year.

Year cake is the other important cake for the Chinese new year. My family always makes the red bean year cake. It is made of red bean, gluten rice flour, sugar and brown sugar. Steam it until it is done. Then let it dry for several days. The smooth look of the cake means that everything will go smoothly in the upcoming year. And the sweet taste of the cake means everything will go well in this coming year.

Once the year cake is dry, we put the sliced year cake in the egg and flour/water mixer to get a layer of the mixture outside. Then, we deep fry the cake until golden brown outside and soft inside. Yum! The snow is till coming down after I finish making the Chinese new year cakes and it will not stop for another 2 hours based on the weather forecast on TV. We have almost 14" so far and all the roads and highway are just a mess. And the gusty 30-45 miles of wind causes the bad drifting. Most of the business are closed and even the city bus has stopped the service. The Milwaukee airport is closed and several hundreds of passengers are stranded there tonight. In addition, the snow storm also hit the south central China recently. It will be a snowy Chinese new year this year for sure.