“Bars of Gold”

Normally, for Chinese New Year, I will always try to ensure that I have a good mix of goodies to offer family and friends : biscuits/cookies, cakes, candied deep-fried nuts, sweets and candies, Chinese kuehs and such like. This year, however, I was so absorbed and focused on making cookies, I made those almost to the exclusion of everything else. It was only right at the end, a couple of days before New Year’s Eve, that I squeezed in some home-made Fu Zhou Nian Gao (Foochow-style steamed New Year sweet cakes), HK-style deep-fried “dan san” (crispy egg twirls) and a few other traditional New Year “must-haves”.

New Year’s Eve dawned with me in a slight panic. I hadn’t made any cakes this year! What horror! New Year’s without at least one (home-made) cake was almost unthinkable. But I felt I had left it too late -- New Year’s Eve was always all about cooking for the reunion dinner ; all baking and other preparations should have long been done and over with. There really wasn’t the time, space or energy to be fiddling with dough and pastry when there was a multi-course dinner to cook up.

Yet amidst the chaos that is Reunion Dinner preparations, I decided to take a gamble… to just throw a cake together… something, anything -- something that would be suitably auspicious for Chinese New Year. And that something also had to be preferably fuss-free, and easy and quick to put together.

After 20 minutes or so of mulling over whether I should take the risk and try to wing it, and then having made the impromptu, oh-what-the-heck decision to fly by the seat of my pants and to try to produce some kind of cake within the next hour or so, I conjured up this idea of “bars of gold”. I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to go look for a suitable recipe; I would just go by intuition, and if it worked, all would be fine and dandy, and if it didn’t, oh well… New Year’s could still be New Year’s without any homemade cakes.

Mandarin oranges are an absolute ”must” for us Chinese during the Lunar New Year celebrations. Mounds of the bright orange fruit are displayed in the home ; guests and family freely snack on these luscious, juicy thirst-quenchers throughout the day ; and one never ever visit friends or relatives without bearing a pair of these auspicious tokens -- it is most ill-mannered and downright disrespectful to the host family to show up without them. (And of course, the host/hostess will always return the well-wishes with another pair of mandarin oranges).

The significance of mandarin oranges come from their name in Cantonese -- “kam”, which sounds like the Cantonese word for “gold”. And thus having lots of these fruits in the home symbolizes an abundant and prosperous year ahead, while bringing a gift of a pair (never odd numbers, please) of mandarin oranges is a symbolic offering of well-wishes of wealth and prosperity to the family you are visiting.

It used to be that New Year mandarin oranges came exclusively from China and Taiwan. Nowadays, we also get varieties from Pakistan.

The mandarins vary quite considerably not only in taste, fragrance and their levels of sweetness and juiciness, but also in their appearance, depending on which area they are from.

Here you have, starting on the left and going clockwise, mandarins from Yong Chun county in China’s Fujian province, from Chaozhou and Shantou (Swatow), China and from Pakistan.

Mandarins from Yong Chun (and many other regions of South China) have the characteristic smooth, soft skin of most Chinese mandarins, with a spongey, almost puffy feel to it. The ones from Shantou and Chaozhou have a firmer, harder, less pretty, lumpy-looking skin (and thus giving rise to the common saying “chao zhou gan” when referring, in a derogatory way, to someone with a pimply or pockmarked face!). Pakistani Kinnos also have the smooth skin but without the fluffy feel when pressed -- they’re firmer to the touch compared to the Chinese variety.

Chinese mandarins go by two main (or at least, most commonly used) names -- ponkan and lukan (or pong gan and lu gan if you want to be phonetically correct) -- but the fruits all come from the same Mandarin family. The difference in appellation is more likely just due to regional customs. In provinces like Guangdong, mandarins are more generally called pong gan. In places like Fujian, Taiwan and Hong Kong, it’s lu gan, whereas in the province of Hunan, mandarins are called mei gan, and in Zhangzhou, mi gan.

My personal quirk is to call mandarins by how they feel to the touch -- the soft, spongey ones I call pong gan, as that seems completely logical (“pong” being the Chinese word for “puffed up/fluffy”), whilst the firmer, lumpy ones I call lu gan.

My family’s favorite is the lugan from Yongchun (which now even come elegantly packed in individual plastic bags), with its nice balance of juiciness, sweetness and aromatic fragrance. Taiwanese and other varieties of Chinese lu gan, we have generally found, can sometimes be a bit of a hit-or-miss experience. Many times, they are, whilst also very juicy, less aromatic of that distinctive mandarin orange fragrance. As for the lumpy-skinned Shantou or Chaozhou lu gan, this normally hardly makes it through our front door, unless they are given to us by visitors or as return lucky tokens when we visit friends and relatives. From personal experience, very often, these make for rather juiceless and tasteless eating.

Another variety of mandarins that I adore are the tiny, mini ones. These are often named “mi gan” or honey mandarins by fruit sellers, partly because they are truly very sweet and juicy, but also because the name makes for good marketing and product positioning.

These look somewhat similar to the clementines of the West (which comes from the tangerine and not mandarin family), but taste rather different ; these baby mandarins still have that distinctive taste and smell of the larger mandarins, or are perhaps in some ways even more fragrant, juicy and sweet. I adore these!

And this year, they are especially good. So incredibly, dribble-down-the-chin juicy (you just have to gently pierce the thin skin with your nail to have a big squirt of juice dart out at you), sweet, succulent and gorgeously luscious. They’re also seedless and not at all fibrous. Yum!

Just to give you a sense of proportion and size, here are the baby mandarins next to the regular lu gan…

Anyway, back to my cake… the cake that was evolving and taking shape in my mind as I hunted around the kitchen for ingredients.

I had decided on a mandarin cake, to give suitable justice for calling the cake “bars of gold”. I was going to use three types -- the baby mandarins were to be used whole, skin and all, whilst only the juice of the regular mandarins (a mix of Yongchun and Pakistani, for a more complex mix of flavors and fragrance) would be used.

On spotting a half-used jar of unsweetened applesauce in the fridge, I made a quick decision to take the cake down the healthy, low-fat, low-cholesterol route. I thought it would make for a nice, refreshing counterpoint to the artery-clogging, buttery richness of all those pineapple tarts and cookies that I had churned out, and which all my loved ones were scarffing down at an alarming rate. (And really, healthy eating and Chinese New Year did not have to be oxymorons.)

So it was settled. Applesauce was going to replace part of the fat with the rest being made up of canola oil. The only cholesterol in the cake thus came from the sole egg yolk that I had included to enhance the texture of the cake crumb. And when you divided that single yolk up between 36 portions, the cholesterol was completely negligible.

Finally, I also decided to bake the cake in a slightly larger pan (a 9”x12”) so that it would come out “shallower”, allowing me to cut it into nicely sized bars, which when displayed, would look rather auspicious indeed!

And… despite, or inspite, of my apprehensions and slight misgivings, the cake came out very well!

The vibrant, cheery golden hue was lovely -- much nicer than the photos would indicate. And this without me adding any custard powder, which I had contemplated at one point, but had then decided against as I didn’t want any cornstarch in the batter messing with the texture and mouth-feel of the cake. The color was just right, and all rather gold-bar-y, if I may say so myself.

Taste-wise, it was rather good too -- if I remember correctly. I only managed two small bites of the cake (snitched from someone else’s slice at that) as the cake was being cut and served up. It was all gone before I had a chance to get a second taste, but everyone seemed to love it, at least from what they told me. I even received an order for the same cake for a few days later!

It was gorgeously perfumed with the fragrance of mandarin oranges, and the tiny specks of mandarin peel freckled through the cake were very pretty. It was all very refreshing, light, citrusy yet sweet.

The cake’s texture was quite full-bodied (i.e. not of the ethereal, fluffy cake-kind), yet still very soft and light on the palate and stomach. It was moist without being dense; soft and fluffy without being inconsequentially feathery. Someone said it was like a cross between a carrot cake (a Western carrot cake, that is) and a pound cake, with the softness of a butter cake. I guess that’s a pretty apt description.

Best of all, it didn’t taste low fat.

So, whilst I had, in local-ese, simply “hantam” (“just whack”) a cake together -- rather blindly, without knowing if it would work or not, it all turned out rather well.

Chinese New Year “Golden Bars”

Makes 36 bars.

120g plain flour
140g cake flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
8 baby mandarins
250ml fresh mandarin juice (approx. 4 large mandarins)
60ml canola oil
80ml unsweetened applesauce
220g castor sugar *
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
½ tsp pure almond extract (optional) **
1 egg
1 egg white

* If the mandarins are really sweet, this can be reduced to 180-190g.

** I added this as I find almonds and citrus to be quite a natural pairing. Here, the almond extract plays a purely background note -- it is not detectable in the final cake, and it is not meant to be. It’s sort of a “baking slight of hand”, if you will -- to lift, enhance and accentuate the fragrance and flavors of the mandarins, and yet not have its own presence felt. I do feel that pure almond extract is the way to go though. The essence version would probably be too strong, obvious and jarring.

• Preheat oven to 175C.

• Lightly coat a 9”x12” cake pan with cooking spray, then dust with flour. Set aside.

• Sift together -- twice -- the plain flour, cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

• Place the whole baby mandarins (yes, skin and all) into a food processor or blender, and pulse to a lumpy consistency. [You don’t want it too smooth or liquidy -- there should still be some texture to it.]

• Combine the oil, applesauce, sugar, extracts and eggs in a large bowl and beat (either with an electric mixer or a hand-held one) until well blended.

• Alternately add the flour and mandarin juice, beginning and ending with flour. Beat to combine.

• Stir in the chopped up baby mandarins. The batter will be quite thin.

• Pour into prepared pan. Bake at 175C for about 35 minutes or until the cake is a light golden brown and the tester comes out clean.

• Allow to cool in pan for 10 minutes before unmolding. Cut into bars and serve.

Variations:

• If baby mandarins are not available, I would imagine clementines would make a very acceptable substitute, although I’m not sure what the acidity of the peel is like for these compared to the mini mandarins.

• I think replacing 2-3 of the mini mandarins with our local limes (the type that you squeeze over your mee siam and mee rebus) would make for an interesting, definitely more assertive flavor twist, though probably not appropriate for Chinese New Year -- one never serves up sour foods for New Year, as it symbolizes sour times ahead!

• I would imagine regular oranges would work well too -- but probably with the much thicker pith removed. That is, slice the peel off thinly, remove the pith and pips, then pulp the orange flesh and peel together.

• Here are a couple of fun thoughts: the cake can be baked in muffin pans and named “cups overflowing with golden abundance” or some similar auspicious-sounding phrase. Or, bake them in mini muffin pans, and call them “golden nuggets”. Just let the imagination run!

Here’s to a golden, healthy and prosperous year of the Rooster!

Copyright © 2005 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
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