Sticky Rice Balls with Sesame & Crushed Peanuts 糖不甩

The end of the Chinese New Year period of festivities is marked by the Lantern Festival 元宵節, a sort of Chinese Valentine's Day.  Lovely glowing lanterns are hung everywhere from rafters and eaves.   Riddles are carefully composed, gracefully written out with brush and ink, hung alongside the lanterns and then the game is on to guess the answers to the riddles.

Traditionally this night is for young men and women to stroll about attired in their best, admiring both the lanterns and potential lovers.  And then if the heavens are aligned, love will blossom.  Or will it?

Valentine Heart Candy

My little girl and I have been brainstorming like crazy what to do for Valentine's Day, something fun and cool and not too hard nor expensive that she could share with her whole class.  And what do you know, we found the perfect thing!  

I was reminiscing that when I was a little girl, all the kid would stuff Valentine's Day cards with heart candies that had cute little sayings on them.  Which we bought at a store back then, of course, and I'm sure that you can still buy it but just not in Hong Kong!  Then I thought, they might not be so hard to make at home, so I had a look around, and what do you know, Valentine's Day Heart Candies are not hard to make at home at all !  Plus you get to write whatever LOVE message you like on them!

Chinese Candied Walnuts 琥珀核桃

I've been wanting to make these special treats for a long time, since last year actually.  I had everything prepared to make it last Chinese New Year but never got around to it...sigh.  I love eating these nuts, it's absolutely my favorite way to eat walnuts!  

These Chinese Candied Walnuts, or 琥珀核桃, are just gorgeous: lovely caramel coated walnuts deep fried to a crunchy deep golden brown sheen.  It tastes like nothing else, the lick of sweetness of the almost burnt caramel in pleasing contrast to the slightly bitter nuttiness of the walnut.  So yummilicious!  

This Chinese New Year we made a whole bunch of these delicious traditional symbols of abundance and wealth and presented them, the lovely darling things, to our New Year's guest as part of the selection in our Tray of Togetherness 攢盒.

Bing Tanghulu Candied Hawthorn Stick 冰糖葫蘆

Gosh darn-namit...I'm super excited about these!  For up to a thousand dusty long years, on any street corner in China might be found a street vendor holding a wood pole spiked with these traditional candy fruit skewers for children.  And since they are a lovely lucky red color and a beautifully rounded symbol of happiness and family reunion, they are especially popular during the Chinese New Year celebrations when all children would get one of these as an extra special treat!  

Besides being super cool and fun to eat and super yummilicious to boot, these lovely traditional Chinese hard caramel coated fruit skewers also have the coolest name: Bing Tanghulu Candied Hawthorn Stick or 冰糖葫蘆.

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.

Tang Yuan Dumplings Osmanthus Sweet Soup 桂花酒釀湯圓

Chinese New Year 中國新年 is come again and the city is stirring itself once again to great activity and anticipation for this most important and festive of Chinese festivals.  One thing I especially love about Chinese festivals is that they put into high gear the twin Chinese obsessions of eating and word play.

So first (and most importantly for me) there are tons of yummilicious things to stuff yourself silly with during the New Year celebration.  Secondly, not only are you're eating all this deliciousness you are also bringing yourself many good things by means of all this eating!  And how is that?  Well that's because all the Chinese New Year dishes have symbolic names that are lucky and auspicious.  

So for our first Chinese New Year recipe, we present you with Tang Yuan Dumplings in Osmanthus Scented Sweet Fermented Rice Soup, 桂花酒釀湯圓, a traditional Chinese dessert soup of tiny chewy rice dumplings nestled cozily into a soup flavored with the unique sweetness of fermented rice and scented with the aroma of delicate osmanthus flower.

The symbolic meaning here is the "roundness" or "圓" of the tong yuan 湯圓 which the Chinese interpret as the circle of family or life being complete and full.  

Chinese Hawthorn Fruit 山楂

This little red fruit is something I had never seen before in the flesh, so to speak, until the other day when we walked past a neighborhood mom and pop grocer 士多 and I spied the rosy orbs rolling about in a cardboard box placed along the sidewalk in front.  Actually I had never actually properly seen these fruit even in images, as I had only ever seen them as part of a traditional sugar coated candy fruit treat called Tanghulu, or Bingtanghulu 糖葫蘆.  

I had wondered about them and so was extremely delighted upon inquiring to discover that these tiny red fruits were indeed the elusive Chinese Hawthorn, or 山楂.

Star Anise Ice Cream 八角雪糕

If you are one of those, as I am, that love the heady almost erotic taste and aroma of licorice then you will love, love, love this ice cream!  This is a spice infused ice cream made from my love of Star Anise, a wonderfully versatile spice that is used in Chinese cooking mostly for its excellent companionship with savory meats.  

So into this spice am I that I have been experimenting with Star Anise in sweet foods, in my baking for one and now in my ice cream making.  So here is our Star Anise Ice Cream, 八角雪糕, a wowzer of an cool luscious licorice treat with the spice's exotic and distinctive aroma nestled snugly against a velvety smooth and creamy ice cream. Yummilicious!

Hong Kong Local Food Recommendations 香港美食推薦

Dear Hong Kong Cookery Readers - We've been asked every once in a while about specific recommends for Hong Kong food places and now one of our readers,  Michelle from Indiana, has written in to ask about where to find the best Hong Kong local eating places and food exploration places and I thought I should share our reply with all of you!  So here it is and Happy New Year to All!  (Special thanks to Michelle for the inspiration for this post!)

Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 3 自製薑餅屋

The back of our gingerbread house

Dear readers, this is the last day!  I have to admit it, this little gingerbread house took longer to do (and a caused a bit of nervous hair tearing) than I thought it would...but what can I say, it was worth it.

There's nothing quite like a house made completely of candy and cookies, not when I was a little girl reading over and over again the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel and the little candy house they found nestled in the woods, and not even now when I'm all grown up and seen, well, lots of strange and wonderful things.  

When my little girl and I finally finished our little gingerbread house and it was sitting so pretty on our table...it was just the feeling of magic...I felt almost as if we were transported to that fairy forest, looking through the trees, eyes big with wonder, peeking at a house delightfully  and completely made of candy, with a wicked wee witch hiding inside...