These golden delicious Chinese corn cakes make a great meal or snack. Symbolizing wealth, completion and luck, it’s the perfect thing to make this Chinese New Year!
Ingredients
- Sweet corn: 2 ears or around 2 cups of kernels
- Corn starch: 4 Tbsp
- Sugar: according to taste
How to make Chinese corn cake
1. Cook the corn in boiling water. Takes around 5 min.
2. Take out the corn to cool. Cut off the kernels with a knife. Some kernels may stick together, separate them with your fingers.
3. Rinse the corn to make them moist. Give it a few shakes to get rid of extra water.
4. Mix in corn starch so that each kernel is covered. (This is why you rinse the corn first so cornstarch will stick).
5. Heat up half a cup of cooking oil in a pan.
6. Pour out most of the oil to be used later. With a little bit of oil left in the pan, turn the heat down to low.
7. Pour corn into the pan. Press it down gently to flatten it. Fry on low heat for 3-5 min, letting the corn stick together into a pan cake shape. (Note: don’t move the corn when it’s frying, or it’ll come apart. You can gently shake the whole pan so it doesn’t stick to the bottom.)
8. Now pour in the previously heated oil until it covers the corn. Turn the heat up to medium and fry for 3 min until the corn is golden crispy delicious.
9. Remove from heat. With the help of a spatula, pour out the oil in the pan.
10. Add enough sugar according to taste. (A good amount.) Place a paper towel on a cutting board then let the Chinese corn cake rest on there to remove excess oil. Plate and it’s ready to eat!
Tips
- I said it above but will mention again since it’s important: Corn starch has to cover all the corn, thus the surface of the corn has to be moist. Then once it’s in the pan, don’t move the corn or else it’ll fall apart. Just gently move the pan so that the corn doesn’t stick to the pan.
- Canned corn will also work. It’s what most restaurants use.
- Corn has to be boiled first to get rid of the raw corn taste. Don’t pour out the water you used to boil corn – it can be made into corn drinks (just add sugar), or be used to cook rice for some corn flavored rice. :3
- If your corn cake still falls apart, try using corn starch + glutinous rice flour (3:1) mixture instead. Glutinous rice flour sticks easier to the surface of the corn, and it helps the corn stay together better in the pan as well.
