In terms of texture, my favorite is the chewy texture which isn’t very ubiquitous in America but something similar to gummy bears I suppose. In Asian, a lot of that texture is developed from various starches such as potato, tapioca, and also glutinous rice. Out of those, my favorite is glutinous rice. You can check out my very popular Taiwanese Sticky Rice recipe. For this round, I’m making a gluten AND dairy free dessert made of glutinous rice flour called Baked Rice Cake.
Traditionally, the sweet rice cake, also known as the Chinese “New Year” cake or nian-gao, is steamed and then either eaten as is or dipped in an egg batter and pan fried. Somewhere along it’s way coming over the Pacific Ocean, it has been adapted to be baked in an oven instead of a steamer and uses butter, milk, and eggs as additional ingredients. Because my nephew is allergic to eggs and milk, I’ve converted the baked rice cake recipe to become dairy free. Since glutinous rice is already gluten free so now you have both a gluten free and dairy free dessert that is also pretty healthy as you see in the ingredient list.
Once you have mastered the base ingredients, you can add a bunch of other things into the rice cake to your liking. Feel free to experiment.
Base Ingredients:
- 16 oz glutinous rice flour
- 3 cups coconut milk (2 cans)
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla
- ¼ cup coconut oil*
* You can choose refined coconut oil if you don’t want the strong coconut flavor in the rice cake. I recommend using refined especially when you are going to add toppings or mix-in’s.
Topping / mix-in suggestions:
- green tea and red bean
- black sesame
- Taiwanese black sugar
- chocolate and walnut
- rum raisin and coconut flakes
- maple syrup and crispy bacon (for those that crave the sweet and salty snack) → I’ll try to make that next time
Directions:
There isn’t much to this recipe because you just need to mix everything and then bake it. The chance of failure is pretty slim because the ingredients are so simple. The key is to make sure your coconut oil is in liquid form so it’s easier to incorporate into the mixture.
Pro Tip: I use non-stick oven-safe pans as my mold for the rice cakes. It’s easy because they pop right out after baking instead of having to grease trays.
First preheat the oven to 350° F then we mix the ingredients. I use a stand mixer but you can use a hand mixer or even just use a whisk because we only need to make sure the ingredients are mixed, not beaten. One thing to note is that rice flour tends to clump up so be mindful when mixing.
At this point, you can feel free to do some “mix-in’s”. For example, I made a chocolate walnut rice cake by using cocoa powder (still dairy free) and topped with some walnuts. Another one I made is green tea with black sesame. The ideal topping for Chinese rice cake is cooked red beans but I didn’t have any on hand.
Once the batter is ready, pour into your containers to be at most 1” thick. Any thicker will take a long time to bake. You can also make it thinner if you like more crust and less filling. I do that sometimes using a giant frying pan and only ½” batter. Keep in mind the thinner the batter, the faster it’ll bake.
Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour in the oven if your batter is 1” thick. You can give the pan a light shake, it should still be slightly jiggly when it’s ready. Fortunate for this recipe, even if you over-bake, it’ll still be fine. Just as long as it isn’t burnt.
Let it cool a bit before removing from the pan. Then go ahead and cut and serve when cooled to touch. Leftovers, if any, can be stored in airtight container on counter. Another trick is to freeze the extras. Just let thaw completely and toast in the toaster oven for a few minutes before serving. 
- 16 oz glutinous rice flour
- 3 cups coconut milk (2 cans)
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla
- ¼ cup coconut oil
- green tea and red bean
- black sesame
- Taiwanese black sugar
- chocolate and walnut
- rum raisin and coconut flakes
- maple syrup and crispy bacon
- Preheat oven to 350° F
- Mix all the ingredients together with a mixer
- Pour into non-stick oven-safe pans to be about 1” thick
- Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour
- Let cool for about 15 minutes and remove from pan
- Best served at room temperature with tea
Gave this recipe a try, followed all the steps but halved the ingrediants. My nian gao turned out rubbery and cakey – not at all soft and gooey like what it looks like in your pictures and how I remembered it as a child. I’m not sure where I went wrong. Did I overcook it? Or added too much rice flour?
Keep in mind this is a baked rice cake not the traditional steam style that is prevalent in Asia. Now, did you use glutinous rice flour or regular rice flour? The regular rice flour is used to make radish cakes so it’s more flakey and not chewy where as glutinous rice flour is for the nian-gao.
I’m guessing you may have used the wrong kind of rice flour because even if you were somewhat off on the proportion, it should still be somewhat chewy.
~Mike
Hi please tell me how many ml is a cup and if you can use water instead of milk. Thanks for your reply
Well, according to google, 1 cup is about 237 ml. I’ve never tried with water but I imagine it would work the same way. However any sort of milk will help provide more flavor such as coconut, almond, cashew, etc.
~Mike
How much cocoa powder do you use? Thanks.
Hi Heidi – it really depends on your preference and the type of cocoa you are using. For this recipe, I’ve used about 1/4 cup of cocoa powder with the entire batch. One way to gauge is to see how brown your mix is after adding cocoa. Have fun experimenting 🙂 ~Mike
Ate u able to offer an option with egg? Juz normal recipe. Thank you.
You can add about 3 eggs and substitute coconut milk with regular milk and the coconut oil with butter – still gluten-free 🙂
I find the recipe a little bit too oily so I skipped the coconut oil.
depending on the type of coconut milk you use – sometimes they are more like coconut ‘cream’ which contains a higher content of fat so definitely skip the coconut oil if that is the case!