My Overthinking

Philly Area mom, Life forever changed by adoption

A Chinese New Year Cake

Last week, I volunteered to bring some sort of food to Ashlyn’s Chinese school New Year Gala today. What to bring, what to bring?

I found a winner. Easy peezy. I think the word she used was “foolproof.”

If you want to give it a try yourself and wow your kids, Chinese friends, or simply yourself (I’m thinking I have been my biggest admirer on this one), here’s how to do it:

Find a dragon head online to use. My inspiration used this one. I preferred something a little more elaborate and Chinese looking. So, I used this picture I found online that was a bulletin board decoration a teacher made for Chinese New Year.

Gather ingredients. I may be slightly over ambitious to try this thing. But, I’m not insane. Cake mixes are just fine. And, I used two to make my dragon about 26″ long. My inspiration used M&Ms to cover her cake with scales. But, when I went over to the single color bulk M&Ms and realized I would need to spend over $30 on M&Ms alone, I quickly decided that icing with nonpareil sprinkles and gummy orange slices for spikes would be just fine. I did “splurge” on an impulse buy of rock candy on a stick for his horns for $.99 each. And, I spent a whole $.33 on bright colored gummy tulips to use for feet.

Find some sort of board to use to put this baby on (unless you happen to have a platter several feet long). My board was 1’x3′. I wrapped it nice and tight with a red plastic table cover from the dollar store.

“Foolproof” didn’t start out real well when my first attempt at my bundt cake turned out like this.

Here’s my formal thanks to all my Facebook friends who talked me off the ledge and coached me through how to butter and flour a bundt cake pan. I happened to have another mix in the pantry. So, back to work. And, the next two turned out just perfect.

After your cakes are fully cooled, cut them in half and set them up on the board in S shapes.

Mix up your icing to be whatever color you want. For two canisters of icing, I used a whole container of yellow food coloring with a couple drops of red to make an orange color. Then, start icing the thing. I intentionally made the icing “rough” to look textured. And, I used the icing to glue the cake pieces together a little when I got to the seams.

As you finish up icing a half cake, sprinkle the nonpareils or sprinkles if you are going to use any (I used them only behind the head and around the tail) and go ahead and start to set up your spikes since the icing will harden if you wait to the end and make it hard to get those things to stick. When I was buying these in bulk, I had no idea how many we would need, so I bought 3 lbs of these at $1.50 a lb. Turns out, we only needed 28 total and I have about 3 times that left. Orange slices, anyone?

You can see here that cute little foot gummy we used too. We added those last but I wanted to show you the spikes.

Use Twinkies or some other Twinkie-like cake (I used butterscotch crumpets with the icing removed since my store was out of Twinkies…how does that happen?) to form a tail. Mark masterfully cut down the end of the cake and shaped the tail for me like a surgeon. And, after generously icing the tail, I used three orange slices sort of fanned out to make the tail look like a dragon tail and not just a snake tail or something.

When you are all done icing and spiking it, attach your paper head by putting some icing on the front of the cake to use as glue and then just stick it right on there. I had laminated the dragon head at an office supply store but ended up printing out a new one on card stock and using that instead since the laminated one wouldn’t flex enough to work.
For the horns, I had Mark cut off the balls at the end of the rock candy sticks and then stuck them in the first cake on an angle behind the head. 
For the feet, I used a little bit of icing and stuck the gummy tulips opposite each other along the body. I realize that most dragons only have 4 feet. But, we used 8 for fun.
I really got creative then with the streamers and whiskers using Fruit by the Foot. I used one full fruit by the foot in some tie-dyed flavor cut in half for the streamers. Using icing as glue, I sort of ruffled it starting behind the head and looping it around. For the whiskers, I used kitchen shears to cut the fruit by the foot to be thin using the lines on the snack itself and then looped it around behind the head to mimic the whiskers from the picture itself.

Done.

I guess it was sort of foolproof once I got the cake out of the pan.

Now, wake your husband who went to bed a few steps ago and Skype your mom and dad at close to midnight and make them oooo and ahhh at your creation.

Now, I just have to get this thing in the car and to the gala. Lord help me.

During breakfast, Mark suggested you could make individual servings of something similar using bagels or frosted donuts. He’s a genius.

Now, off to make some of our own hóngbāo to give the kids later. No money in ours though. I’m going to handwrite some blessings for them and use that instead.

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Zhong Qiu Jie

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. The second most popular holiday in China right behind Chinese New Year, and my parents are in China right now to celebrate.

Going back 3,000 years, every year on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar, when the moon is at its brightness for the entire year, the Chinese celebrate “zhong qiu joe” or Mid-Autumn Festival. Historically, children were told the story of the moon fairy Chang’e who comes out to dance on the moon. The story of the fairy dates back to a day when legend says 10 suns appeared at once in the sky. The Emperor ordered a famous archer Houyi to shoot down the nine extra suns since the land was scorched. Once the task was accomplished, the Goddess of Western Heaven rewarded him with a pill that would make him immortal, but he had to fast for a year before he could take it. He hid the pill in his home while he started to fast. But, his wife Chang’e saw a light emanating from the pill and couldn’t resist it herself. When she swallowed it, she started floating to the moon. Houyi tried to catch her, but instead landed on the sun. During the festival days, the sun and moon appear close together, and it’s said to be the time for Chang’e and Houyi to visit each other. And, Chang’e’s beauty is said to be the greatest when the moon is at its brightest–which is the day of the festival.

Most Chinese now, however, only know the holiday for spending time with family, a little moon gazing,  and moon cakes–which have become sort of the “fruitcake of China.” Lots of people make them (a process that takes 4 weeks if they do it themselves!). Lots of people buy them (some boxes can cost up to $100 even). Everybody gives them. And, lots regive them. And, some even eat them.

Maybe that’s because the things (1) are hugely fattening (like 800 calories) and (2) are “an acquired taste,” code for they just don’t taste good. I used to think that was just to us Westerners. But, seems like even the Chinese don’t like them. They are about the size of a hockey puck and just as dense – a thick “pastry”of sorts filled with all sorts of “goodies” from red bean or lotus seed paste paste to salted egg yolk. Sounds like some companies are recognizing that they have a marketing opportunity here with a traditional food that nobody actually wants to eat and have introduced some potentially more palatable flavors like fruit and green tea. Starbucks in China sells their own set of 6 for about $60. And, Haagen-Daz has even cashed in by introducing an ice cream line of moon cakes which probably ends the regifting on the spot but may actually taste good (note–red bean ice cream is actually quite tasty. I know from experience.).

The Chinese government didn’t miss an opportunity either — this year, the tax bureau announced that employees who receive moon cakes as a gift from their employer would need to pay income tax on them. Some people got bumped up into a higher tax bracket just because of their gifted moon cakes.

I wonder how a fruit-cake tax would go over here. 

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Dui Bu Qi

For those of you learning Chinese, hoping to learn Chinese, or with children who speak or are learning Chinese. Hope you like this song as much as I do.

 

I’m putting it on my iphone for Ashlyn to learn. Gotta know how to say Dui Bu Qi (I’m sorry) for when her Mei guo ren – ness (American-ness, spelling massacred there, I’m sure) is totally obvious (if her blonde curly hair doesn’t give it away).

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