Butter Rice Cakes Recipe (黄油年糕)

Also known as Shanghai butter rice cakes, 黄油年糕 (huángyóu niángāo) and butter tteok, and currently super popular in China and South Korea at the moment, these viral butter rice cakes actually have origins in Malaysia, the Philippines and Hawaii.

When Mr Tashcakes and I went back to China to spend Chinese New Year with his family recently, every single big bakery had these little butter rice cakes. They were all shaped like chestnuts, and some were on skewers in threes while others were sold individually.

They're crisp and crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, and very buttery and delicious.

But despite some crediting their invention to Shanghai bakeries starting to make and sell them, and some people crediting their fame to South Korea making them social media-viral, it's actually South East Asia and Hawaii that paved the way with kuih bingka (Malaysian), bibingka (Filipino) and butter mochi (Hawaiian).

All of these are baked sticky rice cakes made with glutinous rice flour and enriched with eggs, butter and coconut milk.

The only differences between SE Asian / Hawaiian butter rice cakes and the Chinese version are that dairy milk is used in the Chinese version instead of coconut milk, a little more milk so the batter's thinner, and the Chinese butter rice cakes are baked in individual portions.

I baked mine in a flower-shaped cupcake pan instead of a chestnut-shaped pan. I've seen some people also using madeliene pans and ordinary cupcake pans. The most important thing is that your baking pan is metal (not silicone) so you get the crispiest exterior.

You can also watch me make these on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes 12–16 cakes.)

Ingredients:

2 eggs

200ml full fat milk
40g caster sugar
10g full fat milk powder

180g glutinous rice flour

1/3 tsp salt
50g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
A little extra softened butter (for greasing the pan)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease the inside of your cupcake pan with the extra butter.

2. In a bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, sugar and milk powder together.

3. Whisk in the glutinous rice flour and salt, followed by the melted butter.

4. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a large pouring jug to remove any air bubbles.

5. Pour into your cake tin and bake for 25–30 minutes.

6. Immediately remove from the pan while still hot, tipping them out onto a wire rack to cool and crisp up.

7. If you're using a small batch pan or still have cake batter, repeat steps 5 and 6 to make another batch until your batter's all used up.

8. Leave to cool completely before eating.

Enjoy, and have fun.