Hong Kong and Happy Chinese New Year

It’s almost New Year again – Chinese New Year! The Year of the Dragon starts on Monday, Jan 23. Just in time for me to share some (mostly food-related) snapshots of my trip to Hong Kong.

Along with the usual rounds of family, holidays, and general gluttony, I also went on an egg custard tart-eating quest. This traditional dessert now appears in all sorts of variations around town – flaky crust, cookie crust, mini size, Portuguese style…they get really addictive!

Egg custard tarts, mini size. The lighter colored one in the back is made with egg whites – the “healthy” version of egg custard tarts.

It’s always fun to see the extravagant holiday decorations around town, like this supersized Santa.

Angry Birds was big in Hong Kong this year – avian-themed merchandise abounded. My favorite spotting was these Angry Bird cakes, complete with Santa hats.

The macaron craze is still strong over there; here I am holding up a macaron in front of Le Gouter Bernadaud.

Look what I spotted in the Botanical Gardens – a cacao tree!

I love these Chinese donuts. These aren’t the youtiao served with hot soy milk at Chinese restaurants; they are more like beignets, fluffy clouds of fried dough heavily dusted with powdered sugar. The lighter and less greasy they are, the more skilled the chef.

A poster advertising various sweet soups, a popular choice for dessert on a chilly winter night. My favorite is the black sesame paste, a big warm Snuggie of a soup.

Another classic Chinese candy that I can’t find in the US: dragon beard candy. Spun sugar wrapped around peanuts and coconut, it’s like a more sophisticated cotton candy. The silky white threads are meant to resemble dragon whiskers, hence the name. Although you can buy it in packages, part of the whole experience is watching the street vendor make it, and eating it fresh.

One of my guilty pleasures is looking for incidents of Engrish, especially on menus. I have to say this is one of the funnier examples I’ve seen – fish gangsters! (P.S. I wanted to also note we didn’t actually eat any shark’s fin – it was just on the menu).

Believe it or not, the advertised effects of the ginger tea above are meant positively – ginger is often taken for its health benefits. I found the drink a little too gingery and spicy for my taste, but the husband loved it.

More egg custard tarts, this time from the famous Honolulu Cafe. Their tarts have the flaky crust, and a pleasantly eggy custard. So far my attempts to replicate the flaky crust have met with middling results; until I have something I’m happy to show off, I’ll share a recipe for a simpler egg custard tart with a cookie crust at the end of this post.

Here’s a cupcake emissary from the US: the famous Chikalicious of New York City has set up a cupcake shop called Kisses in Central District in Hong Kong.

The shop features a mix of classic and Asian-inspired flavors. The Ferrero Rocher flavor is one of the best sellers, not surprising to me since the candy is a classic choice for gift-giving in Hong Kong.

I liked the Ferrero cupcake, but my mom preferred the green tea cupcake. The store manager told us that they make their cupcakes less sweet to suit the locals’ tastes (like my mom). In fact, “less sweet” was a common refrain at bakeries around Hong Kong.

Sift Bakery, one of my favorite bakeries in my parents’ neighborhood, also introduced its own line of cupcakes.

I tried their lemon meringue cupcake, which was pleasantly zesty and had a great balance of meringue and cake.

No trip to Hong Kong is complete without eating as many xiao long bao as possible – preferably at Crystal Jade.

Normally, there’s no point in trying to sneak egg tarts on a plane back to the US – they’re much better fresh. But I did bring back one tart – this giant egg custard tart pillow I got as a Christmas present. Snickers isn’t quite sure what to make of it.

And another shot of Snickers with a new friend: Rilakkuma dressed up as a dragon for Chinese New Year celebrations. She wishes you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

The egg custard tart recipe below uses a pâte sucrée style crust to house a rich, just barely custard. A couple of tips: use deeper tart tins, preferably with sides at least an inch high, so you can get  the proper thickness of custard – a shallow tart won’t have the right ratio of crust to custard. Baking the custard is a bit like doing crème brûlée: it need to be just set but not liquid, so it barely yields to the bite. Watch the tarts carefully in the last few minutes of baking! And yes, these tarts are best consumed fresh!