Peanut Tikoy Rolls 2023

Level up your favorite Chinese sticky rice cake on luxurious peanut tikoy rolls! Perfectly sweet and chewy with a creamy ube halaya filling and crunchy peanut topping, these mochi-like treats are delicious as a dessert or midday snack.

We haven’t had any brand new recipes on the blog for a while, as I’ve mostly been updating old content for the past few months. So I’m excited to kick off the second half of May with a fresh sweet treat. Peanut tikoy rolls!

What are tikoy Rolls?

Tikoy is a type of Chinese delicacy made from glutinous rice flour. It is also called nian gao or year cake and is traditionally eaten during the Chinese New Year for luck and prosperity.

On the other hand, Tikoy Rolls are a flattened version where a sticky rice cake is rolled around various fillings and coated in ground peanuts. They have been popularized in the Philippines by Chinese bakeries such as Eng Bee Tin and are sold in a variety of local flavors such as pandan and purple yam.

Ingredients for Glutinous Rice Cake

Glutinous Rice Cake is super easy to make with just four simple ingredients and in less than 30 minutes!

Glutinous Rice Flour – This variety of rice flour gives the cake its characteristic chewiness. A neat trick to distinguish it from its regular rice flour counterpart is to check the color of the font on the package. Green font = G for glutinous rice flour; Red font = R for regular rice flour
Water – I find a ratio of 2 cups flour to 1 cup water is a good starting point; feel free to adapt to it. If the dough seems too sticky, add more flour or if it is too dry, add more water.
Sugar – you can sweeten the dough with brown sugar if you want a bit of color and a touch of molasses taste
Vanilla extract – enhances the taste.

Cooking Tips

Roast the peanuts in a dry pan for more flavor. For best results, use the unsalted variety.
For easier preparation, grind the peanuts using a food processor or blender. Alternatively, you can put the peanuts in a resealable bag and crush them with a rolling pin.

For easy removal of the cake after steaming, grease the bottom and sides of the pan with oil. You can also intersperse it with banana leaves for more aroma.

Cover the lid of the steamer with a tea towel or cotton towel to prevent water from dripping onto the rice cake.
Steam the tikoy in a wide pan to make it as thin as possible. Lightly flatten the sticky rice cake while it is still warm and more pliable, as it will be harder to roll once it cools.

To prevent the tikoy from sticking, grease the work surface and the knife or cutter.
Use a piping bag to easily apply the filling or a spatula to spread the filling on the tikoy slices.