List of Chinese Desserts

Here are some types of Chinese dessets:

  • Almond jelly – Popular pudding desert found not only in Asia, but all around the world where Asian restaurants can be found.
  • Banana roll – Common pastry found in Hong Kong, and worldwide restaurants that serve Hong Kong food.
  • Black sesame roll – Hong Kong desert that consists from refrigerated dim sum of rolled thin layer of sesame paste.
  • Black sesame soup –Hot sugar soup with white rice a toasted black sesame seeds.
  • Chao hong guo – Sweet delicacy made by stir-frying fruits.
  • Chinese bakery products – Many types of pastries, from small sum-sum sized pieces to large celebratory cakes.
  • Chongyang Cake – Cake made from rice flour, pulse flour, jujube, chestnuts and almonds, eaten only during Chongyang Festival.
  • Coconut bar –Refrigerated dim sum-sized coconut pudding.
  • Crystal cake – 8 centuries old dessert.
  • Custard tart – Small pastry that hides egg custard below its baked surface.
  • Cut cake – Confectionery desert that is made big and then sold in slices.
  • Douhua – Sweet snack made from very soft tofu. It can be found in hundreds of variations.
  • Dragon's beard candy – Traditional Chinese cotton candy consisting sugar, peanuts, coconut, sesame seeds, corn syrup and glutinous rice flour, looking very similar as spun sugar.
  • Egg tart – Chinese desert tart snack.
  • Egg tong sui – Cantonese sweet soup, mostly not offered in restaurants.
  • Eggies – Regional sweet snack of Hong Kong and Guangzhou.
  • Fried ice cream – Very interesting dessert, mady by quickly deep-frying scoop of ice cream, with hard crust that is enclosing still cold ice cream core.
  • Funing big cake – 2 thousand year old popular desert from Jiangsu province that is mostly eaten with tea.
  • Ginger milk curd – Pudding desert popular in Southern china.
  • Grass jelly –Jelly desert that is popular across entire Southeast Asia.
  • Guilinggao – Medicinal desert made from powdered bottom shell of turtle “cuora trifasciata” and variety of herbs.
  • Hasma – Desert made from dried fatty tissue of frogs.
  • Huangqiao Sesame Cake – Very popular pasty, hailed as one of the oldest cakes from Taizhou region of China.
  • Jiuniang – Sweet rice pudding that has up to 2% of alcohol that is eaten like a soup.
  • Kai kou xiao –Traditional Beijing fried sesame egg cake.
  • Lotus seed paste – Delicacy that can also be found with recipe that reduces number of (expensive) lotus seeds with white kidney bean paste as filler.
  • Mahua – Two Chinese dough sticks twisted one with another, often fried in peanut oil.
  • Mango pudding –Hong Kong desert that often served to both Chinese population and tourists as cold delicacy.
  • Mi san dao – Beijing delicacy, fried cake that is glazed in white sugar. It always contains vegetable oil.
  • Nai lao – Traditional Yogurt of Beijing province that has ingredients such as nuts, raisins and rice wine.
  • Nian gao –Celebratory cake made to be eaten during Chinese New Year. Many areas of China have their own specific variations of Nian gao cake.
  • Nuomici – Popular Chinese dessert that is made from glutinous rice with sweet filling that is shaped into a ball and rolled over dried coconut.
  • Orange jelly candy –Finger-sized confectionery food most popular in Hong Kong, mostly flavored with orange.
  • Put chai ko – Sweet pudding cake that is most popular in Hong Kong.
  • Red bean cake – Dark cake whose main ingredients is sweet red bean paste filling.
  • Red bean soup – Soup made from Azuki beans.
  • Rice pudding – Pudding made from rice, milk and other sweet seasonings (raisins, cinnamon).
  • Rooster Olives –Delicacy that mixes Chinese White Olives with various herbs, seasonings and spices.
  • Sachima – Sweet pastry food popular in Manchu, Canton and Fujian.
  • Snow skin mooncake – Celebratory dessert eaten during Mid-Autumn Festival. It is very sweet and is eaten cold, like ice cream.
  • Song gao – Cake that mixes rice flour, sugar, water and Azuki beans.
  • Sugar painting – Chinese delicacy made by artists who use hot liquid sugar to paint objects and two-dimensional figures that can be eaten when sugar becomes cold.
  • Sweet potato soup – Southern China desert that has a form of a sweet potato soup.
  • Sweetheart cake – Small bread-sized pastry, often called “Wife cake”.
  • Tanghulu – Pastry and candied fruit most popular in Beijing and Shanghai.
  • Tangyuan – Dessert made from glutinous rice flour that is left to create balls, which are then cooked and served in boiling water.
  • Tapioca pudding – Sweet pudding made from tapioca or any type of milk (including coconut milk and cream).
  • Tong sui – Single name for large collective of sweet soup deserts that are eaten at the end of the bigger meals.
  • White sugar sponge cake – Chinese pastry that is popular in Hong Kong made from Rice flour, white sugar, water and leavening agent.
  • Xi gua lao –Jelly made from watermelon, cherries, agar, sugar and vanilla powder.