New Year Cake (年糕 Niangao)

At the Spring Festival, namely, the Chinese traditional New Year, most Chinese families will eat the New Year cake (niangao) which is made of glutinous rice or millet flour and garnished with various anxiliary materials such as bean or jujube paste, assorted fruits, assorted preserves and so on.

The cake is divided into two categories, the yellow one and the white one, representing respectively gold and silver. It used to be the belief that to eat niangao at New Year would bring good luck.

New Year cakes may be cooked by steaming or frying and are served in either case with sugar sprinkled on. Down in the south there is another way of preparation, that is, to soak a kind of plain, ungarnished cake in water and then cut it into slices, stir-fried in a cooking pot with oil and salt, mixed often with spinach or other greens.