Vegetable & Mushroom Dumpling 蔬菜蘑菇餃

Hope that all our dear readers have had a most auspicious Chinese New Year!  We've been pretty quiet, just resting after the fierce study schedule we've been on to support my little girl's long and hard preparation for mid year exams.  It's crazy that the schools in HK have so many exams!  😵‍💫

So better late than never, here's our vegetarian offering for the Chinese New Year: a simple but really yummy vegetable dumpling!  It's a tradition to eat vegetarian on the first day of the new year to cleanse the body and spirit as well as to cleanse out the energy of the old year.

We like vegetable dumplings but have found that it's hard to find a really good one.  Recently, however, we tried a mushroom and vegetable dumpling at one of our local dumpling shops that was simple and yet so memorable and tasty.  I kept wanting to go back for more.  This is our version of that same yummilicious Vegetable and Mushroom Dumpling 蔬菜蘑菇餃.

Chestnut Purée 栗子泥

Okay, this is one of those things were I’m like, floored, at how something I made at home can be so damn good.  Previously when I needed chestnut purée for cake, etc., I had bought cans of ‘crème de marrons ’, (french for chestnut purée).  The French are crazy about chestnuts, apparently, and rightly so.  Crème de Marrons is sooooo yummy!!  I just want to eat it up straight out of the can!  

However, this year, just as I was gearing up for my yearly Chestnut Birthday Cake 栗子蛋糕 (for my hubby😘), my grocery store stopped carrying crème de marron.  Of course.  Right when I need it. Thanks, grocery store.  

So my only option was to try to make it at home.  I was pretty nervous, under a lot of cake-y pressure.  Would it turn out anything like the delicious chestnut purée that I needed for my cake?

Turns out that homemade chestnut purée is pretty easy to make and pretty darn close to the commercially packed ones.  Golden, nuttily sweet with a thick smooth texture, homemade chestnut purée is absolutely fabulous!  And it saves me a buck or two, yay!

Chestnut Birthday Cake 栗子蛋糕

This is the Chinese cake du jour for birthdays!  At least it sure seems to be as almost every Chinese person I've asked has preferred this cake over all others as their birthday cake.  And it's a delight really, this cake, whipped cream frosting layered with the creamy, light, nutty, and irrepressibly delightful flavors of chestnut.  

My hubby has loved this cake since his childhood when a chestnut cake was the only slice of cake he got the whole year.  Poor thing.  Not nearly enough cake.  So every year, for his birthday, I make him a chestnut cake.  😋

Our cake has chestnut in the cake (a revelation!), white chocolate marscarpone frosting and freshly homemade chestnut purée piped on top in a golden, gorgeous, chestnut-y pile.  Lightly sweet, creamy, and packed with delicate nutty flavor, it's chestnuts all the way, baby!