I love a good theme party. I plan for weeks, thinking of details, shopping, planning, and take great joy in the whole thing. It had been a while since our Sunday School class at church had had a get together so I was in search of an occasion to celebrate, something to theme.
It turns out that the date for a traditional Chinese New Year celebration worked perfectly in my calendar, and it was something we hadn't celebrated before. I searched Pinterest, Google, the local library, and whatever other sources I could find for information on Chinese New Year tradition, game playing, and most importantly food.
Our celebration included Chinese dishes of all types, thanks to our church friends. There was so much food! My contributions included this Crab Rangoon Dip (I baked the won ton chips), Potstickers, Chinese Almond Cookies, Nian Gao, Good Fortune Dragon Tea (mmm, so good), and frosted snake cookies using my favorite cut-out cookie dough.
The Rangoon Dip got great reviews from the other party-goers. I was just so-so, but I also thought the onion flavor could have been a bit stronger. I doubled the recipe and used imitation crab, but those were the only recipe deviations I had.
The almond cookies were very good. Almond flavoring is, to quote Randy Jackson, "just okay" for me. I liked these cookies, though, because the almond flavoring was not overwhelming. So that you can learn from my experience, I'll share two tidbits:
1. The dough is dry and stiff. Use your hands to bring the dough together into balls.
2. Use the egg wash and then add the almonds. Otherwise, you just keep knocking the almonds off the cookie!
The Nian Gao was definitely interesting. It has an almost gelatinous texture, is not too sweet, and has no other flavor to speak of. It's certainly not offensive to the American palate in any way, but it also doesn't have the amount of sweet or flavor we expect in our desserts. It's no chocolate cake or truffle, and if you have texture issues with Jello, I would stay clear of this one! The recipe calls for glutinous rice flour, which was easy to find at our local Asian grocer.
Normally I wouldn't mention a pre-packaged item from the freezer section at Walmart, but the Tai Pei Potstickers were delicious! They are easy to prepare and the flavor definitely does NOT seem like it is prefab.
Everyone really enjoyed this time together. For a look at some other Chinese New Year ideas. Check out my Pinterest board with all the great ideas I found.
Update: I should have said this earlier, but forgot. The opinions regarding the Tai Pei potstickers are completely my own!
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