Less than one week into the (Chinese) new year of the Snake and already much has happened... I can tell it will be a busy year! It is my last officially as a medical student and hence partly why I decided that it might be nice to capture these moments in a new blog.
The new year kickstarted as always with our Tuen Nian Fan 團年飯 "reunion dinner" - the Chinese version of new year's eve which is traditionally celebrated with lots of food with your nearest and dearest.
We are always fortunate to spend this with dear friends of ours who are splendid cooks. They put on an annual feast, and in recent times this has consisted of 10 dishes - each one carefully named to bring some sort of fortune on all who eat it, but also to cleverly reflect the ingredients of that dish. For example the Chinese word for "prawn" also sounds like the word for "happiness" and hence the dish "Be happy and smile always" features lots of prawns! Ingenious, right?
Here are a few of the courses to feast your eyes on! (These were served at the same time, as is the sharing Chinese way, only the table wasn't quite big enough for all 10 to be devoured simultaneously!)
Dessert featured a very interesting sweet potato, coconut and ginger l0-layered pancake, quite fitting as Pancake day was only a few days away.
The Menu
The next day I then rustled up this cake to say thanks for our dinner. As I was born in the year of the snake, it seemed like the natural thing to do! I was happy with the result, though must admit that I pre bought Battenberg and Angel cakes to make it! Although I love baking, time constraints don't always allow me to do so, but I've learnt you can still make something special without having to turn on the oven!
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This was very easy to put together as the fruit and cakes were already very colourful which meant not even icing was required!
The cakes were two Battenburg loaves and one round Angel cake (pink and yellow sponge with buttercream on top which I took off). As this cake is made from lots of sections it's important to have whatever you wish to serve it on ready before hand - I covered a cake stand in foil so we could write on it before beginning the preparing.
The Batternburgs were sliced into one inch pieces, and the Angel cake into six equal portions. The angel cake was just over twice the height of the Batternburg slices so I could fill each pair of Batternburg slices with small chunks of strawberry. I then arranged the slices on the stand, so the round Angel cake produced the curves in the body of the snake. Once the snake was assembled, I used the buttercream leftover from the top of the Angel cake as decoration to hold in place blueberries.
For the face, I sliced a strawberry lengthways as you can see, using just the second (or third) quarter of it. The blueberries eyes were held into the face using toothpicks (toothpicks are so helpful!), and the tongue is a strawberry calyx (the leaf on top of a strawberry) that has been cut. I also used one of these for the snake's 'crown', and used the rest as a sort of grassy bed.
See more easy-peasy cakes here: No-need-to-bake Novelty cakes
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My Mum also made this Lor Bak Gou 蘿蔔糕, a savoury cake that is made from a type of large white turnip. Our family friends love my Mum's, so much so that they sometimes demand it! It is a time-consuming dish to make however as the turnip must first be shredded and prepared - luckily for Mum, this part is always my Dad's contribution to the cake!
Today I am off to an "alternative Valentine's feast" - looking for to it!
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