Name: New Year's Cake (Neen Gow)
Yield: Makes one 8-inch cake, about 72 slices
Ingredients: 3 Chinese dried red dates; 5 slabs brown candy (peen tong), about 11 ounces; 3 teaspoons vegetable oil; 7 cups glutinous rice flour; 1 tablespoon white sesame seeds; 1 large egg; vegetable oil, for pan-frying

Neen Gow, New Year's Cake, is the most important cake eaten on New Year's — the main ingredient, glutinous rice flour, is a symbol of cohesiveness. The egg-dipped, pan-fried slices have a mellow sweetness and are slightly chewy from glutinous rice flour. Mama remembers watching her grandmother's servants scraping the slab brown candy, peen tong, for this cake, which is the traditional technique. Brown candy is a kind of sugar that is sold by the slab in 1-pound packages and is also available loose in bins in some Chinese markets. The slabs are about 5 inches long, 1 1/4 inches wide, and a scant 1/2 inch thick. The scraping of the sugar is extremely labor-intensive, so some cooks dissolve the slabs of sugar in water, which is less authentic but much easier to prepare. Be sure to use glutinous rice flour here, not regular rice flour!

See the introduction to Turnip Cake for how to serve and store this New Year's Cake.

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