Traditional New Year cakes get a modern twist—Shenwang’s holiday gift boxes offer a delightful mix of sweet and savory flavors

Shenwang Hotel’s Hong Kong-style radish cake, priced at NT$680. (Photo provided by Shenwang Hotel)

Taiwanese New Year’s Eve dinners are always designed around auspicious meanings—for example, “prosperity year after year” with sweet-and-sour fish, “career advancement and wealth” with hair vegetable soup, or “starting a prosperous life with chicken” with chicken soup. These dishes are relatively easy to prepare at home, but if you’re aiming for “rising step by step,” that’s a bit more troublesome.

In the old days, Taiwanese people regarded the holidays as a major event, starting their market runs for New Year goods a full month before New Year’s Eve. Among these, “steamed rice cakes” were particularly important. The most representative dish was the radish cake, as the saying goes, “a good start in the first month.” It is a dish that the hotel especially recommends. However, it involves many steps: preparing the radish, mincing the meat, chopping the mushrooms, sautéing the dried shrimp, and pounding the glutinous rice. Not to mention the processes of steaming, slicing, and frying—it’s not something you can easily have someone bring over, nor can you quickly pick it up from the market. Even if you manage to find it at a night market, it’s hard to guarantee its quality.

Understanding the busyness of modern life, Shenwang Hotel has, as in previous years, launched its traditional holiday gift boxes, which naturally include radish cakes and New Year cakes. The “Hong Kong-style radish cake” is made with carefully selected winter white radishes with fine fibers, paired with cured meat and dried shrimp, steamed to create an authentic Hong Kong-style radish cake with a delicate texture and fragrant aroma. It is a masterpiece from the Chaopinji Hong Kong-style Dim Sum Kitchen.

To complement the sweet, soft, and sticky radish cake, Shenwang has also thoughtfully prepared “Premium XO Sauce,” made with specially selected golden hook shrimp and dried scallops as the base, along with minced garlic and bird’s eye chilies. The sauce is carefully stir-fried to achieve an enticing aroma and a spicy yet not overpowering flavor. Whether eaten on its own or mixed with other dishes, it makes the perfect pairing.

For the most “labor-intensive” sweet New Year cake, Shenwang offers three flavors, blending tradition and modernity to add a rich variety of tastes. These include the “Longan and Walnut New Year Cake,” filled with the rich aroma of longan; the “Tieguanyin and Red Bean New Year Cake,” made with locally hand-picked high-mountain Tieguanyin tea and plump red beans; and the “Chocolate and Sesame New Year Cake,” which sweetly combines cocoa with the nutty flavor of sesame seeds, offering a delightful taste experience.