Continued the Bunny year Chinese new year goodies baking marathon, here comes the red bean year cake (Nian Gao) 年糕. This is another traditional popular Chinese New Year dessert. It is mainly made of glutinous rice so it is actually gluten free. There are many different kinds of flavors of year cake. It can be sweet or savory. I always use my family's recipe to make this sweet brown sugar red bean flavor year cake.
It is considered good luck to eat year cake during Chinese new year. The word 糕 (Gao) means "cake" is identical in sound to the word, 高 which means "high". Therefore, it is going to raise oneself higher in each coming year by eating year cake. The cake batter is mixed and put it in a big steamer to steam until it is done. Then, the cake will stay in the refrigerator for several days until it is a little bit dry and hard for cutting. We usually either eat it just the way it is (my Mom would definitely disgree about this way!) or dip it in flour/egg batter and deep fry it. It is good either way.
It is so cold outside today again! It is only 4'F (-15'C) and windchill -25'F (-32'C) even though it is bright and sunny. Chinese new year is just around the corner (February 3) so it is time to make some Chines new year Fa Cake (Fa Gao 發糕). This year, I decide to make some changes instead of the tradition brown sugar flavor. I ended of making the chocolate and cherry cranberry flavors besides the usual brown sugar. The chocolate ones turns out so good that my local American friends just cannot have enough of them! My personal favorite actually is the cherry cranberry one. The dried cranberry just adds so much texture and different layers to the taste. And the red color is definitely good for Chinese new year. Now it is time to go to make the year cake...
Happy new year! It has been snowed more this week. Two foxes decided to come to play around outside my office! I have never seen live foxes so close before and it was really cool! They were actually more orange even though people called them "red" foxes! Hope that everybody has a wonderful year 2011!
Merry Christmas! Here is a bonus cookie: Orange pecan cookie. This is actually my second favorite this year. This one has grange juice, orange zest and chopped pecans on the sugar cookie based dough. Very intense flavor. 
There is actually another pecan sugar cookie made this year but it was all gone before I could take pictures! That's everything of the cookies this year. Wish you have a merry Christmas and happy new year!
Happy Christmas Eve! Here is the champion cookie this year, "White Chocolate Cherry Cookies"! Shortbread kind of cookie. The perfect combination of cherry flavor and not too sweet white chocolate. I did not expect that the maraschino cherries would make such a nice tasty cookie but they did! Beautiful and great taste! One of the best cookies I have ever made!
Next one is the "Double Chocolate Mint Cookies". If you like girl scout mint cookie, this one is your heavenly gift since it is much better than girl scout one! 3rd place in this year's Christmas cookies. The wonderful chocolate based dough plus the semi-sweet chocolate bits in the cookie and super minty flavor make this one instantly crowd favor!
Happy Christmas Eve's Eve! We are almost done with all holiday gluten free cookies showdown here! :) Number 9 is the "Cardamom Snaps". It is not only a new recipe but also a new spice that I would like to try. Cardamom usually is used in the Indian cooking. It has a fragrance between ginger and cinnamon. This cookie is a combination of ginger snaps and molasses cookies. It tastes very much like ginger snaps but with something different that you just cannot catch what it is. :)
Number 10 is " Lemon Ricotta Cookies". This one is adapted from the 
