Curate a meal or party spread of lucky Lunar New Year food and round out the celebration with Chinese sweets and treats. Choose from traditional Chinese desserts — like almond cookies that can bring good fortune and sweet sticky rice with a lucky combination of eight candied or dried fruits — or variations on Chinese classics, like a baked version of nian gao, the usually steamed Chinese New Year cake. Savor black sesame and steamed pears with their medicinal powers, or make the TikTok favorite Tanghulu street food at home. You’re destined for good fortune and flavor, whichever dessert you choose.
Jian Dui (Sesame Balls) Two Ways
With their spherical shape and golden color, jian dui signify prosperity and are served for good luck at all kinds of Chinese celebrations, including Lunar New Year. Stick with tradition and fill the glutinous rice flour balls with red bean paste, or try Christine Lau’s fun guava-cheese riff.
Ba Bao Fan (Eight-Treasure Rice)
Though you can use any mix of dried and candied fruits to adorn this lightly sweet sticky rice, tradition calls for eight types. In Chinese, ba, the word for eight, sounds like fa, or prosperity, giving the dessert its lucky symbolism.
Black Sesame Paste
Chef Zoey Xinyi Gong tops this classic Chinese dessert with textural bee pollen, sesame seeds, and osmanthus flower. Jujube dates add sweetness to the nutty black sesame that’s widely used in traditional Chinese medicine food therapy.
Chinese Almond Cookies
Tins of buttery, slightly crunchy almond cookies are a Lunar New Year gifting tradition. The cookie shapes resemble coins and symbolize good fortune and prosperity.
Yin-Yang Tang Yuan (Sweet Sticky Rice Balls in Soup)
A symbol of harmony and togetherness, these round rice balls stuffed with black sesame seeds are bathed in a soothing, rock sugar–sweetened Chinese dessert soup for an ideal Lunar New Year’s treat.
Hakka-Style Black Sesame Mochi Cakes
The Hakka people are a Chinese minority group living throughout the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, where these simple mochi balls dusted with peanut powder and black sesame powder are a popular confection.
Steamed Pears with Sticky Rice
For this tender, lightly floral dessert, chef Zoey Xinyi Gong stuffs subtly sweet pears with chewy mung beans. Popular in Chinese cuisine, steamed desserts are light and easy for the body to digest, a benefit commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine food therapy.
Tanghulu (Candied Fruit Skewers)
Re-create the Chinese street snack of sugar-coated fruit that’s become a TikTok sensation. 2021 F&W Best New Chef Lucas Sin shares a simplified recipe that sticks to water, sugar, and a little bit of light corn syrup rather than candy thermometers, parchment paper, and ice baths.
Green Tea Fortune Cookies
These large-scale fortune cookies from baker Joanne Chang are an invitation to write fun messages to tuck inside. It takes a little practice to fold the hot tuiles, but we can assure you they’ll all be tasty even if the first few are less than perfect.
Nian Gao
Break from tradition and bake the typical Chinese New Year cake instead of steaming it. Evi Abeler makes a few more swaps, using butter instead of oil, white sugar rather than the usual brown, and including dairy milk and almond extract for a version with a similar texture and flavor profile. Most importantly, it’s made in the same spirit of good luck and prosperity for the year to come.
Coconut Tapioca Pudding with Mango and Lime
Chunky, fresh mango with tangy lime is a great counterpoint to the creamy Cantonese-style tapioca pearl puddings here.
Black Sesame Banana Cake Trifle
Celebrate Chinese flavors, like sesame seeds and sago (a starch from palm trees), in this black-and-white layered dessert from chef Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco.
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