Chinese New Year Special | Tnee Kueh (Nian Gao) Pt 1

This is probably the best post we have been waiting to share with fellow readers, the nian gao or tnee kueh or sticky glutinous rice cake or kuih bakul, whichever term that you are familiar with. Yes, this is the sweet stuffs that we mentioned at the end of the kuih kapit post. This is one delicacy that is a must during Chinese New Year and these days the delicacy is not only enjoyed by the Chinese but also Malay and Indian or other races. Who could actually resist sweet things?

Following the similar previous approach, the tnee kueh will have two postings with the first one focussing on the ingredients while the second one will showcase the process of steaming tnee kueh to perfection. The traditional way of making tnee kueh is very time consuming and comes with lots of taboo. It is said that during the tnee kueh steaming process, one should never talk bad about the tnee kueh or the outcome will be disastrous.

Whether this is just taboo or not, is it better to observe the warning as the work to make them is painstakingly tiring and to repeat the whole process can be quite frustrating. But most of the time, the tnee kueh will turn out well like the one we see in the picture below. So let us begin to visit the culinary school of home made tnee kueh….

This is the mouth watering tnee kueh; sticky, delicious and seriously addictive!

Look at the endless tnee kueh spreading across the table. These are actually ready for sale.

These are the cans used to hold the tnee kueh while put under steam. The cans kind of customs made and not easily available these days.

The cans have been used for a long time, specifically for making tnee kueh only. Alternately, some people will use the lychee cans, longan cans or the condensed milk cans.

First stage of preparation: The banana leaves used to hold the ingredients for tnee kueh must be properly cleaned. This is to ensure the banana leaves do not have any dirt or foreign materials that may affected the making of tnee kueh.

The banana leaf will be cut accordingly to fit into the cans.

This is how you do it to cover the inner part of the cans with banana leaves.

The inside of the cans must be properly covered to ensure that when you take out the tnee kueh from the cans, the shape of the tnee kueh will retain

This is the can completely wrapped with banana leaves.

These are some of the cans done wrapping with banana leaves

Why banana leaves? Well, for one it can hold the tnee kueh well without spilling over and it acts like a good container after tnee kueh is removed from the can

For the ingredients, glutinous rice is used.

The glutinuos rice will be crushed into bits and pieces and then soaked in water over night.

These two bags containted crushed glutinous rice already soaked in a day earlier and ready for next process

The water or liquid from the bag will be squeezed out to keep the glutinous as dry as possible with minimal water inside. Another option is to hang the whole day until it dries up.

Once the drying up process is done, the crushed glutinous rice is then poured into big container for next step.

By this time, it is almost turned into flour with some water left.

Sugar is added for sweetness and colour. White sugar is used in this case but if you want darker coloured tnee kueh, brown sugar is added instead.

The process of mixing the glutinous rice flour and sugar is quite manual. The mixture must be evenly mixed to ensure no lumps

It looks dry but in actual fact, the glutinous rice flour contained water from the earlier drying process

After constant stirring, the mixture starts to turn into thick solution

The process keeps going until the mixture of glutinous rice and sugar becomes as smooth as possible

Finally the mixture is well blended

The mixture is now ready to be poured into the cans wrapped in banana leaves.

The woods used to start the fire

The steaming of tnee kueh will also use the traditional fireplace and lots of woodfire will be used as fuel. The long hour process of steaming tnee kueh requires quite a lot of woodfire. Also, the fire must be kept at proper intensity so that the out come of the tnee kueh will be consistent and nice. The next post of tnee kueh making can be read here