With Lunar New Year is around the corner, families in Asia will celebrate the arrival of the new year and yearning for wealth, joy and luck. A good share of these celebrations is to savor the native pastries seen as sweet start, spread of blessings, and reunion with family. From the traditional snacks bought when paying new years visit to the relatives’ home to the ones prepared when having their reunion dinner at home, here are the top 10 must have snacks for the Chinese new year.
One of Singapore and Malaysia’s traditional CNY kueh, the buttery pineapple jam tarts are extrasoft with a filling of pineapple jam that melts in your mouth. The pastry shells that enshroud the preserve are thick and sweet, gold like the New Year’s ingots which symbolize prosperity for the coming year while the preserve on the inside is sticky sweet like molten gold. Pineapple tarts are baked with much care throughout several weeks before CNY and handed out in beautifully designed boxes to BFFs and relatives. Every home would not be complete without having at least a few boxes of these goodies on the Lunar New Year reunion table.
This is a thin, sweet and savory square of barbecued pork which has its origin in Singapore and Malaysia and is a CNY culinary essential. Bak kwa is savory, slightly salty, with smoky undertones and touched with burntness, and as with such edibles, beyond irrational and deeply, deliriously in love with the taste. Singaporeans and foreigners, kids and adults wait for hours in front of Lim Chee Guan, Bee Cheng Hiang, and Fragrance bakeries to purchase freshly baked barbecued bak kwa for New Year home visits and exchanging gifts. Whether barbecued or honeyed and best eaten in slabs or thin slices, bak kwa is astick-to-your-ribs snack teeming with protein that words cannot describe about how it reflects the spirit of each and every festival.
The cookies which are incredibly thin and painstakingly rolled are mouthwatering treats which enjoy popularity in the Malaysian, Singapore and Indonesian CNY. Love letters, crunchy, lightly sweet, and with the nostalgic evocativeness of their name, represent the aesthetic for happiness and romance in the new year. Called puto seco, they are made from rice flour, coconut milk and sugar; to prepare, bake and roll well they call for expertise. Love letters are also contained in Chinese decorative tins in red and gold as other items for CNY greetings.
For Chinese, powdery sweet glutinous rice dumplings tucked with a sweet nut filling are THE important CNY delicacies. They mean togetherness, luck, and a healthy, happy, sweet, and prosperous life in future. These happiness rolls are prepared from an aqueous, egg-based dough that is baked, before having a layer of ground nuts, sweet maltose syrup and fats rolled in on the dough. In China, people often accompany them with tea, or give it to coworkers or leave it at a tabernacleto worship to the gods, unconditionally, eating egg rolls mean a smooth and prosperous beginning.
Chinese glutinous rice cakes are soft and sticky and come wrapped in vibrant festive colours and meaningful components. The emerald green tea filling and red bean paste symbolise freshness and good fortune across the board. It’s also sticky to munch and hence signifies families tied up in love and harmony sticking together in the future. There are numerous other edible ingredients that are used to symbolically fill the Lunar New Year cake and these include lotus seed paste due to the lettering formation of AABB which symbolically connotes ‘Jin’ meaning money or prosperous wealth, and taro which also symbolically denotes more of the ‘Jin.’ One has a sort of jewel like toning and wish to them and so these are the gifts and favors the centerpiece.
This is a typical Chinese CNY custom where a cake as sweet, dense and the size of a cupcake is consumed. Its name translating into “to prosper” suggest a true reflection of the New Year blessings everybody wished for. As simple as rice flour and sweet potato or brown sugar, this fa gao becomes extra special when accompanied by hot ginger tea which balances the sweetness with spiciness from ginger. Fa gao is specifically prepared by families on the Lunar New Year Eve, and served to visiting relatives on the following day – The New Year’s Day itself represents auspiciousness in the coming year.
Malaysian or Singaporean in particular, these are delicately printed with flowers - literally translated to biscuit or cookie. It has a tender and juicy meat combined with the fine work of flower carving, which looks like embroidery work of a palace. Fresh grated coconut is used in every batch to give it the unique taste and naturally arising structure. Kueh bangkit are rather time-consuming but if prepared, they are worth a lot of effort. It is the kind of sweets for only the best guests, which is served with Chinese tea or with the Lavazza coffee.
The round golden cookies with walnut crunch filling in China is the famous CNY cookie from Suzhou. These cookies have a ‘perfect’ golden hue, a buttery, rich taste and a slight nutty crunch – and they look like little golden bullion bars wich is very lucky indeed! This also relates to the things that families wish for each other during reunion during the Lunar New Year; that is to acquire as much happiness as the sugar in the cookies, and as much wealth as the walnuts contained in them.
This type of rice cake dough is very compact and relatively tacky, and it’s a traditional food for Lunar New Year celebration in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. The name Niangao itself, means getting higher year after year thus wishes for betterment a head. It also has a very viscous texture that symbolises ties and togetherness in families throughout generations. Sweet niangao that comes with brown sugar or red bean paste definitely also needs a lot of power to cut them into clean slices! As it is usually homemade or given in attractive red boxes during the festivities.
In China foods as winter melon and kumquat are covered by thick layer of crystallized sugar syrup and are eaten as sweets during the CNY. This again gives the message of problem-free future or a sail through in hope of a ‘sweet’ future. Lotus seeds, winter melon seeds, almonds and pecan also get coated in crystallised sugar to produce those chewy, sweet Chinese New Year snacks. They represent dreams that the life to come will be as tasty as sweets!
No less delicious than Lunar New Year specialty dishes, CNY goodies and snacks embody the wishes and prayers for the year ahead that people offer to their families. Packed with as much symbolism and cultural significance as the holiday itself, these festive bites not only delight the tummy but also carry deep meaning. The colors, flavors, textures, and even the names of these snacks symbolize wishes for prosperity, companionship, romance, and success. With these **CNY goodies and snacks** on the table, families across Asia can enjoy a sweeter and more meaningful celebration as they welcome the Lunar New Year.
