Enter the Dragon 2024 - Eat your Zodiac Kuih first
Is Dragon the luckiest Chinese zodiac?
There are typically marked spikes in the birth rates of countries that use the Chinese zodiac or places with substantial Overseas Chinese populations during the year of the Dragon because such "Dragon babies" are considered to be lucky and have desirable characteristics that supposedly lead to better life outcomes.
Chatswood - Year of the Dragon Festival
Come over and grab your favourite ingredients ie PANDAN, Dragon fruit powder auspicious in the Dragon year and Sambal Tumis for savoury cookies. All you need to make and create all these delicious food and drinks.
See you there in Chatswood CBD on Saturday, 10.00am to 8.00pm, 3rd February 2024.
The most difficult Kuih in this case a cake, to make a "Thousand Layered Cake" known as "Kek Lapis Sarawak" and it's been bestowed to the mighty Dragons for the theme Kuih for every zodiac this Lunar New Year 2024.
Enter the Dragon! There were 1,500 drone dragons that danced in the Shenzhen sky - Around 1,500 drones lit up the night sky over the Chinese city of Shenzhen on 22 June 2023, with imagery of a flying dragon to mark the start of the country’s Dragon Boat Festival.
The personality traits of people born in the year of the dragon are: charismatic, intelligent, confident, powerful and they are naturally lucky and gifted. In everything that they do, they tend to do it to the best of their ability with high standards. References: "Dragon zodiac".
Let's continue with our Kuih for every Zodiac this Lunar New Year
Enter the Dragon with this delectable Thousand Layered Cake also known as "Sarawak Kek Lapis.
The Sarawak layer cake has its origin in the form of layer cake with various spices found in Indonesia called lapis legit or kek lapis Betawi (Betawi refers to Batavia, the old name of Jakarta). This spiced Betawi cake is thought to have been derived from a form of European spit cake, which was made by the wives of Dutch administrators in Batavia during the colonial period and served during evening tea. It is believed that this type of spiced layer cake was introduced to Sarawak in the 1970s and 1980s by Betawis from Jakarta. The Sarawak people then added new ingredients, flavour and colour that resulted in a new version of the layer cake being introduced and named as Sarawak layer cake. In addition, modern Sarawak layered cakes were inspired by Western cake-making in the early 1980s, later modern designs to the traditional layer cake, along with new flavours were introduced.
Kuih Kapit or Love Letters and Sweet Rita Nyonya Kueh has "blue butterfly it" - Kueh Kapit is for those born in the Year of the Dog.
Out of all the Lunar New Year goodies, the love letter is one of the most poetic. Back in the day, these romantic pastries were often used by lovers to relay messages of affection and the consumption of the pastry would mean that the message is taken to heart. Also known as kuih kapit, they are rumoured to have served as a means of communication for lovers in the past. Eating the heartfelt message was also seen as a sign that the lover's words were taken to heart. The message's edible quality ensured the absence of proof. As the story goes, these letters were rolled into the wafers as a way for secret lovers to communicate in the past. Consuming the wafers also represents the idea that the lover’s words were taken to heart.
Kuih Rose or Kueh Loyang or simply "Honeycomb Cookies" for those born in the year of Monkey. Now that we know how the names and what it means, let’s look at the other names that kuih rose is known as in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. In Hong Kong, they called it 糖环 or literally translated as sugar rings.
kuih loyang – because it uses a mould which is called loyang in Malay and Indonesian.
kembang goyang in Indonesia, because we shake the mould (goyang) to release the cookie, which resembles a flower (kembang). Fyi, bunga is another name for flower.
kuih goyang – reason above
flower cookies
beehive cookies – as the pattern resembles the pattern on a beehive
A basket of Kuih Rose by @minmay kitchen and "Beautiful colour and flavour mix from @my.blue.tea They are blue pea, rosella, dragonfruit and Pandan. I just used a bit of the food colouring to achieve my desired colour palette. It's like making art with food"
Calling all Kuih lovers and bakers
There is Kuih for all seasons and occasions and there is Kuih kuih for every zodiac only the last 2 zodiacs posed a bit of a challenge........ ie "Ribbon Cookie" for the Goats and "Teng Teng Kacang" for the Roosters.
How about your call ie which of our products would you like to use to create these two Kueh Kuih or Cookies? Send us the recipe and photos and we will send you a hundred (AUD$100.00) worth of MyBlueTea products for each recipe. Please email your interest to participate to Amy at info@mybluetea.com.au - maximum 3 passionate cooks and recipe developers.
And, don't forget some of the savoury food that we have shared ie all auspicious food to eat during the Lunar New Year.
From left all must-have auspicious food by @ipohgirl is this beautiful Blue Butterfly Dumplings - read about dumplings in the Long-life previous blog.
(2) Prawns is "Har Har Siew" and this new recipe, Roselle Sweet Sour Prawns will be published soon.
(3) Long-life noodles are a must during Lunar New Year and here's our version of Singapore Sing Chow Mai with Sambal Tumis by @grazialim and
(4) "Har Har Siew" - Spicy Buttered Prawns with Meat Curry base powder by Imelia @mel.s_food