Chinese New Year Guide: Traditions & Desserts

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival or the New Lunar Year, marks the beginning of the Chinese Lunar Calendar and involves a 15-Day long celebration, which is full of festivities, food and parades.

Important traditions

The most notable of the traditions revolve around preparing food and the house for the New Year’s Eve banquet. Families and friends are invited to huge banquets. The banquet features some of the best desserts which are an important part of the tradition. Or also known as the Chinese New Year desserts. Let us take you down step by step through the important traditions:

• Spring cleaning

People like to welcome the New Year by cleaning the house thoroughly, to get rid of any bad luck and bad spirits. The sentiment is to welcome the new year in a ‘clean’ slate. This also means settling any disputes or any unfinished business.

• Preparing banners & gifts

Banners with New Year good luck messages are prepared in advance, as are gifts, flowers and red envelopes with money.

• Food Prep: putting away the knives

Food preparation is extremely important as no Chinese should welcome the new year with knives in use. Putting away the knives on the first day of the new year is necessary, as the traditions dictate this can “cut away” the good luck, this also means the need to prepare food in advance.

Traditional Chinese desserts

Some of the must try desserts include:

1. Tang Yuan (Rice dumpling): These sweet rice dumplings are consumed during the 15^th day of the celebration. Families set aside a special time and cook these dumplings together made from glutinous flour made of rice, served with sweet syrup.

2. Candied lotus seeds: Dried lotus seeds covered in sugar and candy, cooked in syrup, are known as the “lucky food” that ensure a long line of offspring.

3. Kamquats: Kamquats are a special fruit for the Chinese, and are known to bring prosperity and riches to the families. This is why kamquats served with coatings of sugar are given as gifts.

4. Eight treasure rice: This chewy rice pudding has a lot of surprises and treasures inside, including red bean, peanuts, prunes and dried apricots.

5. Rice cakes: The Chinese homophone for rice cakes means prosperity. These sweet rice flour cakes are crispy in texture and may be offered with bean paste.

Candied lotus seeds recipe

Here’s a traditional dessert recipe for you to try for the Chinese New Year:

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 cup dried white lotus seeds (rinsed and drained)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup sugar for coating
• 1/4 cup of water
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. 1. Fill half a saucepan with water, and put in the baking soda. Bring to a boil and add dried lotus seeds. Bring to a boil for 3 more times, removing pan each time when water boils and bringing it back to burner again. Then drain the seeds.

1. 1. Rinse the seeds repeatedly and remove bits of skin. Remove green centres if desired.

1. 1. Add 1 cup sugar to a ¼ cup of water in a saucepan. Bring to boil, add lotus seeds and vanilla extract. Simmer for 20 minutes until seeds turn brown and translucent. Cook until little liquid is left.

1. 1. Remove from stove and put seeds on baking sheet. Let them dry.

1. Roll in powdered sugar and allow to dry. Serve with sugary syrup if desired.