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For Chinese New Year, the most important cake is the Niangao/ Nian Gao/ Nian Kueh or in Penang Hokkien, it is called tnee kueh.

Other traditional cakes and cookies prepared and servered during Chinese New Year or Ramadan are kueh kapit (love letters), kueh bangkit, kueh bulu, pineapple tarts or jam tart and peanut biscuits.

jam tart biscuits for the festive season

Other Chinese cakes prepared during Chinese festivals includes:

Mid-Autumn Festival - Moon cake, mooncake biscuits

Offering to deities - common cakes prepared are ang koo kueh, mee koo kuih, bee koo, etc.

Kueh Kapit or 'love letters' is a popular biscuit served during Chinese New Year or Hari Raya Puasa.

Kueh Kapit

Kueh Kapit

It is a tradition in Malaysia and Singapore to make or buy a variety of cookies and cakes for Chinese New Year. Friends and relatives invited to the house are often served a variety of these cakes and cookies. New Year cookies are also given as gifts to friends and relatives. These cakes and cookies are served to  make cookies traditional Check out some of our Chinese New Year home favourites below:

Ingredients

Pineapple Filling:

2 pineapples

180g rock sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

Pastry:

300g plain flour

50g custard  powder

1 tablespoon milk powder

180g butter

70g icing sugar

1 egg

2 egg yolk (for egg wash)

Cloves for decoration

Method

To make the jam fillings: (Prepare filling to cool before starting on the pastry)

Cut pineapple to pieces and finely grind in a food processor. Place pineapple, rock sugar and cinnamon in a pot and cook slowly over low heat, stirring constantly until liquid is evaporated. Leave jam to cool .

Pastry:

Cream the butter and icing sugar until fluffy and beat in the eggs.

Sift in the flour, custard powder and milk powder into the butter mix, until the dough holds together.

Divide pastry into small balls (about 2-3 cm diameter)

Preheat oven to 190 deg C

Flatten each pastry ball and put some filling in the centre. Wrap up and shape into balls. Arrange all the balls on a lined baking tray.

Brush the pastry balls with beaten egg wash and stick one clove on the top.

Back for about 12 minutes.

Ingredients

120g butter

120g castor sugar

grated rind of 1 orange

2 tablespoon orange juice

1-2 tablespoon thick orange syrup

1 egg yolk

a pinch of salt

Sieve these dried ingredient together:

1 cup self-rising flour

30g plain flour

30g rice flour

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg. C.

2. Cream butter and sugar together until soft, add orange rind salt.

3. Fold the sifted dry ingredients into the cream mixture. Add the egg yolk and orange juice and orange syrup.

4. Put the mixture into a cookie press and piped it onto a greased tray. Bake the cookie for 5-8 minutes or till golden brown, at a temperature of 180 deg.C or 350 deg.F.

Ingredients

300g tapioca

4-5 pieces pandan leaves

1 egg yolk

20g margarine

140g icing sugar

120ml coconut milk

1/4 tsp vanilla powder

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 165 deg. C.

2. Fry tapioca flour with pandan leaves over a low flame until fragrant, discard the leaves and set aside to cool. 

3. Sift the cooled tapioca flour and icing sugar in a bowl.  Add the margarine, egg yolk and coconut milk.  Knead the dough until it is pliable.  If you are using a cookie press, push some of the dough into the cookie press tube.  Press the dough out in the pattern you had selected.

Otherwise, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/2 cm thick.  Cut out into long strips and then into individual pieces.

Arrange on parchment lined baking tray.  Bake at 165C for 15 minutes.

Ingredients

4 egg

100gm sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

100gm wheat flour  

(To prevent the cake from moulding fast, try frying the flour in a non-stick pan before use)

1 tablespoon tapioca flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Kueh Bulu / Kuih Bahulu

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees centigrade.

2. Whisk the eggs and sugar until stiff and add the vanilla essence.  Continue to beat until mixture turns pale and thick.
3. Sieve wheat flour and tapioca flour together with baking powder in 2–3 batches into the egg mixture - fold in the flour.

4. Lightly grease bahulu moulds and spoon in batter to fill up to slightly below surface-level.  Lightly grease the mould (to prevent the bahulu from sticking).

5. Bake in preheated oven at 200°C for 8 –12 minutes or until golden brown. Remove bahulu from the moulds

6. Cool on wire racks before storing in airtight containers.

Ingredients:

300 g glutinous rice flour, sieved

300 g brown sugar

300 ml water

3 tablespoon golden syrup

banana leaves for lining tins

4 or 5 round tins, 10 cm-width

Tnee Kueh tradition

Tnee  Kueh (Nian Gao/ Nian Kueh) is a sticky sweet snack made of glutinous rice and sugar. It was traditionally offered This  was believed to be an offering to the Kitchen God to ensure that his mouth will be stuck with the sticky cake and hence cannot report on the family's bad deed to the God of all Gods (Yu Huang Da Di). Today, you can buy Nian Gao from the supermarket or sundry shops but some still prepare it traditionally. In Malaysia and Singapore Nian Gao that is sold or home-made is mainly steamed and without any fillings.

Method:

1. Mix glutinous rice flour and water into a smooth paste. Add brown sugar and mix well until sugar is dissolved. 

2. Line tins with banana leaves or bamboo leaves  (cut so that it is higher than the top of the tin and folded down to wrap around the edge of the tin). Secure the lining with strings.

3. Pour the paste mixture into the tins, and steam in the pot on low heat for about 8 hours. note: Place a muslin cloth on the cover so that the water condensation will not drip into the cakes. The cake will turn reddish brown colour when cooked.

4. To serve: The cake can be eaten soft when fresh or hard after a few weeks. Freshly made cake that is hot can be rolled into a ball with a chopstick or fork and dip or coated with some freshly grated coconut. If it is cool and slightly hardened, cut it into pieces and eat as it is or steamed to soften it and served with grated coconut. In Malaysia and Singapore, the hardened cake is cut into thin pieces and deep-fried together with sweet potato or yam.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Mooncake Festival, dates back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty. The Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, in the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September)

Mooncakes are cakes or pastry-like tarts traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Tradition mooncakes are shaped like pie or tarts, round or rectangular measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. The filling is usually made from lotus seed paste or other beans and may contain salted egg yolks. Moon cake biscuits, flatter than the Chinese moon cake, are also commonly made of the same pastry crust and are are shaped into figurines or animals. These biscuits may or may not contain any fillings