As we say goodbye to Christmas, we usher in the new year. For much of the west, there isn’t a quintessential new year’s dish, but for the Chinese, our Chinese New Year brings in a whole slew of festive flavours and dishes of decorum.

One of the CNY classics is nian gao (年糕). I wrotea piece on these festive rice cakes back in 2018, but for the uninitiated, nian gaos are dense, brown blocks of cake, made with glutinous rice flour, water, and sugar, cooked until caramelised. A classic method of preparation for these rice cakes is to steam them until sticky, then cut them up and toss the pieces through coconut flakes and brown sugar. Sounds simple, but to us Chinese, it’s festive af.

But this year, this new decade, I discovered a new variant to the classic that blows the old out of the water. I say discover, but really, I learned of it through my most trusted, most reliable source for recipes and cooking ideas—my mom. As they say, 年年高升, meaning rising to greater heights every year. So in the spirit of the adage, momma and I are amping up the classic nian gao, with a variant that’s a chip off the old block, but with some stellar substitutes.

First off, the nian gao itself. Instead of the typical molassesy nian gao—kept on the shelves of Chinese herb shops for months until they’re dusty, only to be brought out in the one month before the new year’s before its kept again for a year—we’re going with a millennial, made-from-scratch version. For this modern version, we’re using the natural sweetness of pumpkin as the base, with tapioca flour added to give it that gummy texture, and coconut milk for a milky fragrance.

Next, instead of dessicated coconut, we’re using freshly grated coconut, shaved fresh at the wet market in the morning, still fragrant and damp. If you’re in a suburban town in the US, I’m sorry, but this will probably be really tricky to source for. So the typical store-bough dessicated coconut, while nowhere near as fragrant and tender as the fresh type, would still do.

And for the coup de grace, instead of just using regular ol’ brown sugar, we’re using gula melaka, or coconut palm sugar. And if you’re feeling extra boujie, you can try finding coconut palm flower sugar, which is the premium, top-of-the-line finishing sugar that few know about. (Again, culinary secret courtesy of my mom.)

So, make some pumpkin nian gao, and as per Chinese custom, here’s me wishing you greater heights this year (年年高升), an overflow of abundance and wealth (年年有余), success in ten thousand things (万事如意),  wealth and prosperity (恭喜发财), and most importantly, send me some red packets (红包拿來).