Photography by Matyen

CNY is a cultural celebration where families and friends come together to share food, gifts, feelings and other pleasant moments. One of the focal activities embraces the ability to taste various tasty courses of the traditional meals that are customary during this favorable time. Cultural significance: These snacks specifically have great meanings in their culture and it is common to prepare these delights in the home to usher in the Lunar New Year. Surely no home should be without these ten important CNY goodies during this period of gluttony and familial celebration.

1. Bak Kwa, or Barbecued Pork Slices

Satinized soft pink slices of pork enhanced by a heaped coating of honeyed barbecue. Bak kwa is undoubtedly the reigning champion of CNY snacks because of how perfectly well the sweet and salty go together. It is placed on the table for guests and portrays guests to have sweet future life. Starting with simple sliced bak kwa to luxury bak kwa which includes tea smoked or chili crab flavour, these snack must have it in every home during CNY.

2. Pineapple Tarts

Pineapple jam between two delicate, buttery and crunchy cookies. Being a traditional CNY item, this has a Chinese pastry crust, but filled with Peranakan ingredients – a hallmark of the diverse local people today. Pine apple represents the New Year while the golden brown tarts represent wealth in the New Year.

3. Love Letters

Often referred to as ‘love letters’, originally because the message of love was sent via rolls of these thin, crispy lacy biscuits, are favourites of CNY fare due to the easy way in which they can be infused with different tastes and flavours. Conventional love letters consist of coconut milk and rice flour, rolled into tiny cylinders which dissolve in your mouth. More contemporary variants are brightly painted or scented letters of affection using the green pandan or fragrant osmanthus.  

4.Kueh Bangkit

These exceptionally small tapioca flour and coconut milk cookies that are found especially during CNY in all the South east Asian cultures. It adds to the delicate, soft crumb and the sweetness complements well the intensity of the coconut milk taste. The star, flower and diamond forms used in the program symbolizes prosperity for the household. Such traditional cookies symbolize people’s desire to have better and more wealthier year in the following year.

5. Almond Cookies

From the soft, tender cookies that collapses in your mouth to the crispy America version, these round golden cookies with roasted almonds are one of the CNY cookies familiar to many households. The sweet smell of butter and almond means that there is nothing but joy and happiness in the new year,in the home. 

6. Sugee Cookies (Shuang Pi) 

Finely-textured biscuits containing a rich egg custard mixture with the sweetness of Chinese brandy aroma. These blends are covered in a soft, flaky skin breaking to reveal a smooth sweet yolk custard in the inside part. The crispy noodle called Shuang Pi has a golden coloration; besides, consuming it with chopsticks might boost their receptiveness to ideas connected with prosperity and unity, which, in turn, is proper in family gatherings during the CNY period.

7. Peanut cookies (Hua Sheng) 

This is a crunchy peanut cookie baked with a savoury spread of crushed peanuts and sesame seeds. This product has become a staple for the Chinese New Year snack because it has a highly sedimentary life, it is cheap and children love its taste. Flowers, fish, and rice stalks on each of them are also the auspicious symbols associated with the Chinese New Year celebration import of prosperity. 

8. Muah Chee

Essentially, the filling is sweet glutinous rice flour dough similar to mochi but stuffed with crushed peanuts or black sesame seeds. Translucent Muah Chee jelly des backward into small pieces and serve or rolled into gross and then sliced. These snacks are quite sticky and stretchy in their texture, and they are not overly sweet, which makes them quite addictive for many people. For this reason, their round shapes symbolize endurance and elasticity, which hint at no barriers to success in the new year.

9. Kueh Tutu (Putugal) 

Rice pastry made from rice flour and coconut milk sweetened with palm sugar, served with gula melaka syrup. They are very downy and fluffy inside which is a good foil for the dense coconut gravy they are accompanied by. Every plain white tutu meaning pure is typically embroidered, indicating complicated family relations developed over decades. 

10. Chicken Essence

What’s a reunion dinner during Chinese New Year without many big steamed containers of chicken essence added into the celebration? Fresh chicken and seasonings are stewed and simmer for several hours in order to release the chicken stock with herbs flavors and nutrients. That clear soup thick and sticky, which is used to deepen the taste and concentrate various dishes, and to enrich them with valuable nutrients. To have chicken essence shows that one is obeying the commandment to honor parents – being concerned with elders’ health within the family.

The variety of CNY snacks and goodies represent their significant cultural meaning, and the sweetness conveying the wishes for the new year with all the good aspects of retribution, abundance, and unity. As families will sit down to celebrate another Lunar New Year’s day these traditional snacks prepared with love and shared will undoubtedly add to the sweetness of the upcoming festivities.