Nin Koe (New Year Cake)

What is Chinese New Year without Nin Koe? This is however a cheat's recipe for making the traditional Nin Koe, using palm sugar to make it more aromatic. There is a popular belief that eating this cake assures you of a prosperous year ahead. Nin Koe in Cantonese roughly translates to "Better Every Year" .

It is also believed that one should not be in an angry mood or make bad comments while making the Nin Koe as it will refuse to set or it would be ruined. I was in a very happy mood while making the Nin Koe although I mixed the wrong flour together initially. (There are about 10 types of flour in my house). It was a blessing in disguised as I half everything otherwise I would have a VERY big batch of mixture and will spend the whole day waiting for it to cook.

Would you want to eat it?

Recipe as follows:

a. 600g palm sugar (gula melaka)
b. 900g caster sugar
c. 1.2 litres water
d. 100ml vegetable oil
e. 1.2kg glutinous rice flour, sieved
f. 400g tang flour (wheat flour or tang mien fun)

1. Put palm sugar, caster sugar and water into a sauce pan and bring to boil. Cook until the sugar dissolves completely, stirring occasionally. Set aside to cool.
2. Put glutinous rice flour and tang flour together in a large mixing bowl. (It needs to be very large as you will need to knead the dough here)
3. Add the cool down sugar mixture into the flour mixture. Mix well to form a smooth paste. I used my hand as it is easier to handle.
4. Stir in the oil and mix well.
5. Pour into a greased stainless steel cake mould measuring 15 x 30 cm. If you want it to be more fragrant, you can use banana leaf to line the mould. I used the Silicon moulds (4 in a pan) to make and need not greased it as the mixture is already a bit oily.
6. Steam for about 3 hours over medium heat. Usually it is steamed using the traditional water in a wok method but I cheated and used the electric steamer instead.
(If you think 3 hours is long, the traditional recipes usually requires steaming of 8 -  10 hours!)
7. Remove, cover with plastic wrap (cling wrap) and leave to room temperature for 4 hours or so.

There are 2 methods in cooking the Nin Koe
1. Steaming - steam the nin koe until it is soft and sprinkle desicated coconut over it and serve immediately.

2. Frying - Slice the cooled rice cake into 1 cm think pieces, dip into beaten egg and pan fry in a hot, oiled wok until fragrant and slightly browned. Remove and serve immediately.
Idea** You can also cut out yam and sweet potato pieces and put a piece of Nin Koe in between and fry as above.

** If you are using a different type or smaller mould, you may want to use 1/2 of the ingridients stated above.