5 Tikoy Recipes To Try For Chinese New Year

With Chinese New Year around the corner, you’re sure to receive more tikoy than you or your family might know what to do with — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing! Aside from re-gifting these sweet, sticky cakes, you can simply store them in your refrigerator and bring them out when you’re ready to make easy snacks for your kids. But they’re getting bored with it, you say? Well, here are different ways you can cook tikoy so it feels (and tastes) unique every time!

What is Tikoy?

Tikoy is a sweet rice cake that’s usually served during Chinese New Year. It is also called “nian gao,” is made with glutinous rice flour, sugar, water, and lard. Gifting and eating tikoy is a tradition that hails from China, brought to the Philippines by immigrants from the Fujian region. Tikoy is considered to be a lucky food to eat when celebrating Chinese or Lunar New Year as it symbolizes prosperity and good fortune.

5 Tikoy Recipes To Try For Chinese New Year

1 Pan-fried Tikoy Recipe

You really can't go wrong with the classic pan-fried tikoy. It's simple, it's tasty, and comes together in only a few minutes! All you need to do is slice your tikoy, dip it in scrambled eggs, and pan-fry until golden. One of the best things about this OG way of cooking tikoy is you can control how long you cook — the longer you do, the crispier and more caramelized the outside becomes. 

Bonus Tip: Try slicing your tikoy into strips (think: fries) to make it more interesting, or into smaller, bite-sized squares for your smaller kids to snack on!

Get this pan-fried tikoy recipe on Yummy.ph.

2 Chocolate Tikoy Rolls

Tikoy is sweet, but only very mildly so. This is why it works in this Chocolate Tikoy Rolls Recipe! Cut your tikoy into 3-4-inch strips, add your favorite chocolate bar, and wrap them both in lumpia wrapper. Then, fry until golden brown. The chocolate and the tikoy will meld together to make a deliciously choco-flavored sticky filling, and you get to enjoy this with the crunch of the lumpia wrapper.

Bonus Tip: Serve the chocolate tikoy rolls ala mode! They'll be a nice hot-and-cold treat when served with vanilla ice cream, or you can even go double choco and serve it with a chocolate ice cream, too.

Get this chocolate tikoy rolls recipe on Yummy.ph.

3 Ube Cheese Tikoy Rolls

It's sweet, it's earthy, it's salty, and it's sticky. Ube Cheese Tikoy Rolls is another tikoy roll recipe, but its flavor is uniquely Filipino. You can use the same one from the choclate tikoy rolls recipe and simply swap out the ingredients! All you need to do is to fill your lumpia wrapper with quickmelt cheese, ube jam, and tikoy, then fry until golden brown. You'll get an explosion of flavor and texture that your family surely won't get enough of.

Bonus Tip: Use a piping bag (or DIY one by filling a resealable plastic bag with ube and cutting off one corner) to pipe the ube jam onto the lumpia wrapper. This way, you get to make more lumpia with less mess and in less time!

4 Tikoy Langka Turon

The classic turon can be upgraded with tikoy in this Tikoy Langka Turon Recipe. The best part: you get to sneak in some healthy fruits into your kids' diets! If you are not a fan of langka, you can skip this entirely and simply wrap the saba banana and tikoy together.

Bonus Tip: To add an extra nutty flavor, drizzle toasted sesame seeds on the freshly-fried turon — before the caramel sugar coating hardens. Alternatively, you can even add your favorite healthy nuts in the wrapper itself!

Get this tikoy langka turon recipe on Yummy.ph.

5 Ginataang Halo-Halo With Tikoy and Flavored Bilo-Bilo Recipe

Okay, this Ginataang Halo-Halo With Tikoy and Flavored Bilo-Bilo Recipe is a bit more involved as it doesn't cook as fast as the previous tikoy recipes, but it's so worth it! It's not fried, so that's already a plus in our books, and you can make big batches of this and simply portion it out every time your kids ask for a bowl. It can be served hot or cold, and the addition of saba banana and kamote ensures your kids aren't just consuming carbs.

Bonus Tip: No time to make the flavored bilo-bilo? You can swap this out with flavored tikoy instead! It's still nice to have the bilo-bilo so you have different textures, so you can make them plain and then add in a mix of flavored tikoy (tikoy can come in pandan and ube flavors also).

Get this ginataang halo-halo with tikoy and flavored bilo-bilo recipe on Yummy.ph.

Looking for healthy snack ideas? Check out these 10 Healthy Snack Recipes You Can Easily Make For Your Kids At Home.