Chinese Water Chestnut Cake 馬蹄糕

We've been busy preparing for Chinese New Year 農曆新年; it's pretty festive here in HK this year.  Picking out our lucky flowers at the crush of humanity that is the Chinese New Year Flower Market, cleaning our darnit too small of a house, getting our little red packets prepared as gifts to children and unmarried big persons.  And the food!  There's New Year's food everywhere one looks, it's just fabulous!  

The traditional trinity of cakes that one must have during the Chinese New Year, at least here in Hong Kong, is as follows:  Sweet Rice Cake Nian Gao 年糕, Radish Cake 蘿蔔糕, and Water Chestnut Cake 馬蹄糕.  The Three Queens that welcome the Lunar New Year!  

We have already posted about the first two cakes and you can just click on the links above to find our recipes.  Today we will complete the trinity with the recipe for Water Chestnut Cake, or 馬蹄糕, a very unique sweet jelly traditional Chinese cake that is made with both fresh water chestnuts and water chestnut flour.

Chinese New Year Flowers 中國新年花

The one thing you have to do every Chinese New Year if you live in Hong Kong is to visit the Chinese New Year Flower Market, or 中國新年花市.  

This huge, chaotic market located yearly at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay began as a flower market to sell New Year's flowers to all the households preparing for the New Year (one must have flowers in the house for New Year!) and has evolved over the years into not only an amazing flower market but also general fair or market, where anything and everything is sold, from toys to gadgets to political literature and t-shirts.  Everything with strong emphasis on preparing and celebrating for the upcoming Chinese New Year, of course.  

We go every year to enjoy the very festive (though very crowded) atmosphere, to buy a balloon (a giraffe balloon!) and a toy or two for my little girl and, most importantly, to pick up our Chinese New Year's Flowers 中國新年花.  The Chinese New Year Flower Market is just so gorgeous and fun, with festive and colorful New Year's flowers as far as the eye can see!

Chinese Candied Kumquats 糖漬金橘

This Chinese New Year recipe is a delicioso combination of a couple of things I really love: candy and fruit, and something really lucky for the Chinese New Year, the kumquat, or 金橘.  金橘 translates as "gold orange" which symbolizes that good fortune (which for the Chinese always means MONEY!) will find you in the upcoming year.

Which, to be honest, is always a good thing, right?  More money means more yummy food, amiright?  What people usually do is to buy big pots of kumquat laden trees (tying on lucky red pocket envelopes all over it) to put in their house and invite in the luck for the new year.  

This year we decided to not just decorate our house with kumquat trees but to make some 'golden' food to ingest into our bodies so as to increase our likelihood of golden luckiness even more!  And thus we present to you our version of the Chinese Candied Kumquat 糖漬金橘, a choice snack for the festivities of the Chinese New Year, bringing you not only yummilicious delight for your sweet tooth but also a fun way to swallow some of that 'golden luckiness' right into your very being!