It’s the new Chinese year, dear readers, and we’re ready to start it off with our lovely fortune guaranteeing Chinese Prosperity Cakes Fa Gao 新年發糕!
These simple but gorgeous sweetened flour cakes or buns are steamed until they dramatically rise and then crack into a distinctive and attractive pattern. This ‘explosion’ of these buns, made in the event of the new year, indicates that your upcoming year will be prosperous! Cool trick, amirite?
Before we go on, let me quantify a teensy bit. Your prosperity will be predicted by the mysterious gods of bun fortune, BUT you gotta make sure that your buns actually do achieve that ‘explosion’ effect. Your buns might just not ‘explode’ at all (guess how I know that LOL).
Okay, full confession , it took me three tries to get this right. My first attempts produced nice cake buns but they were just rounded on the top with a tiny crack here and there. It was surprising hard to get that darn crack effect!
Well, hard until you know just how to do it which is what we’re going to do here today.
Start with a bit of low gluten flour (can also use cake flour or pastry flour, or in a pinch all purpose will do as well) and a dash of baking powder. Low gluten flour makes a light and tender cake bun. Baking powder is what powers the rise.
Next we add the sugar. It’s a mixture of mostly brown sugar for that lovely caramel flavor and a bit of white sugar for that ummph of sweetness. Pretty simple so far amirite?
Add the room temperature water. As an aside here, you could experiment with different kinds of sugars to get different flavors in this bao/cake. Like date sugar, slab sugar, black sugar, palm sugar or rock sugar. Just remember to melt any hard type sugar first by mixing with hot water instead of room temp water and then let it cool down before adding both to the flour.
Use a whisk to mix the mixture. See the bubbles? That’s the baking powder reacting with the liquid and releasing carbon dioxide bubbles to lighten the batter. Later on when the batter hits the heat the baking powder will have a similar reaction again and power the rise of the cake.
To achieve a smoother batter, pour through a sieve to remove any hidden flour lumps. If the mixture is too thick to easily pour, add more water, a bit at a time, until it is just able to be easily poured out.
One the very fun things about Chinese Prosperity Cakes is that they are, really, just another form of the muffin or cupcake. Chinese cupcakes, how cool is that! So break out your cupcake tins and paper liners cuz here we go.
Place the liner filled tins in a steamer basket. Get the steamer water going until boiling hot.
Pour the flour sugar mixture into your cupcake liners. Fill only up to 80% full so as to allow enough room for your explosion of ‘prosperity’, also known as the cake rising so much that it cracks wide open. Once finished pouring , place the steamer basket over the steamer and cover with the lid.
There are two tips I learned from my experiences making the bao. This first one is, I think, the key to making the bun explode gloriously out. You need to steam over high heat! The first couple of times that I made this I wimped out and lowered the heat, thinking that such delicate buns should be better steamed at lower temperatures. WRONG! High heat all the way!
The second tip I have for you is that you either use a bamboo steamer or you need to add a towel over a metal steamer before adding the lid. Bamboo steamer lid absorbs condensation, metal lid doesn’t so it drips down.
The first time I used a metal steamer and the condensed water gathered on the lid dripped all over my poor cake/buns, gelling and preventing further expansion. I switched back to using my good ‘ol bamboo steamer, though I had to run lickety split out to the kitchen store and buy a new bamboo lid (my old one recently fell apart.). Bamboo lid, no more drippy problems.
This last step is optional but, really, why not? It’s so fun to mark the buns in this way and it looks fantastic! Just use a bit of red food coloring and the end of a chopsticks and stamp your cakes with a lovely Chinese mark. I remember my dearest grandma doing the same to her bao.
That’s all for this simple but extremely lucky cake/bun! Make some today and see if your fortune is bright for the upcoming new year!
Happy Chinese New Year from all of us at The Hong Kong Cookery!
Chinese Prosperity Cake Fa Gao Recipe
新年發糕
(makes 8 cakes) Prep time: 5 min Cook time: 20 minsIngredients:
- cupcake tins and cupcake liners
- 2.4 cups low gluten flour, 300g
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, 100g
- 3 1/4 tbsp white sugar, 40g
- 1 cup water, 240g
- red food colouring
Directions:
Whisk flour and baking powder together. Add in brown and white sugars. Whisk to mix. Add in water and mix til no more lumps. Use a scraper to push mixture thru a sieve to ensure a smooth batter. The mixture should be pourable with the consistency of runny honey.
Prepare the steamer pot with water and heat until boiling over high heat. Off the stove, add the cupcake tins into steamer basket. Line each tin with a cupcake liner. Pour the batter into the liners, filling each only to 80% full so as to allow for the rise when steaming.
Place steamer basket over steamer. If using a metal steamer place towel over the steamer, making sure to tie up the loose ends of the towel so that it doesn’t get close the heat source. Close lid tightly and steam over high heat for 20 mins. Don’t open the lid while steaming. When finished remove cake/buns from steamer and remove from tins.
Prepare tiny portion of liquid red food coloring in a sauce bowl. Dip the fat end of a chop stick into the food coloring and use to stamp the cakes in the middle.
Your Prosperity Cakes are ready to eat! If not eating right away cover so airtight and keep in the fridge up to 5 days. When ready to eat steam for 4 mins or until warmed through. Enjoy the good fortune!
New Year Treats at The Hong Kong Cookery:
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