[ Fancy pastry ]

flower cake

People in the past,

Such as cake,

Be more honest.

Traditionally, flower cakes are already enchanting enough if they are decorated with red and green gourd candies. They can be regarded as the west gate and golden lotus in the cake; roses, osmanthus, and songhua trees are even more amazing, and they are enough to be honored as the top of the flower.

Ancient flower cakes were divided into two types, one for health preservation and the other for nourishing the heart. It's eye-catching. According to the current aesthetics of inner scroll, the ancients did not have that ability yet. In fact, the Sui Dynasty Xie Xian's "Shijing" excerpts from Tao Gu's "Qing Yi Lu" include flower-folded goose cake, purple dragon cake, and crispy cold white cold utensils. The front two pictograms and the back "cold utensils" are incomprehensible. In fact, during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, people used to refer to Sanzi as "cold tools"."Chewing cold tools will alarm people in ten miles." The Jusheng Nubi Crystal Dragon and Phoenix Cake at the Shaowei Banquet during the Jinglong Period of the Tang Dynasty was fascinating. Later, I learned that it was hemp flowers. My personal opinion is that everyone should only use it literally and not take it seriously. Tangyuan was invented only in the Song Dynasty. Before the Qing Dynasty, cakes were decorated with "flowers" by honest people, and spent on their names, functions and meanings. This is in line with the stuffy culture of Oriental people!

It may not be possible in the Qing Dynasty. Yuan Mei, a big eater, only recognizes Liu Fangbo's mooncakes and Mingfu's home-made lace mooncakes. He has a saying praising mooncakes,"Hold the diamond-shaped pattern on the four sides with your hands, and don't peel the dates, so take the fresh ones; If you don't boil the oil first, take the raw ones. It is sweet but not greasy, loose but not stagnant. Its work is all in it, and the more it is, the better it is." To sum up in the vernacular, all handmade mooncakes are delicious.

Wang Shixiong's "Suixiju Diet Book" in the Qing Dynasty records two typical flowers that are used in cakes, osmanthus and songhua. When good food is related to taking medicine, it is a bit of courting with beautiful women and saying: I love you because I want to carry on the family line. Osmanthus is "Xin Wen." Eliminate stench, wake up stomach, and eliminate phlegm." Songhua is the main source of nourishing blood and stopping wind. Eating more can also help heat. Take it alone to treat Li diarrhea, and use soup according to the syndrome." Now I pass by "Jiangnan Spring", a time-honored cake group shop in Hangzhou, and when I see the yellow songhua cake, I only have two words "replenishing blood" in my mind, like seeing "pig liver" and "jujube paste".

Name: Songhua Cake

Brand: Jiangnan Chun

Jiang Nanchun's boss told me: Speaking of which, people in Hangzhou, eating pine pollen can reduce inflammation (is good for the stomach). Songhua cake is made with rice flour, which will be slightly sweeter, but it is still very popular because pine pollen will not taste good if it is not sweeter.

Eighteen years ago, I was a child who couldn't stay away from the glass of the pastry window. My love for flower cakes was much deeper than the flower rope my mother tied for me. I have long known that cakes are divided into north and south schools. Those "northern cakes" that seem to have the rough temperament of the north are usually represented by Beijing dim sum. The only "jujube cake" that I can't put down is actually jujube paste. The outside is wrapped in a flower shape made of flour, and baked with lard, water and dough. It tastes crispy, fragrant and satisfying.

Name: Date flower crisp

Brand: Caizhizhai

Caizhizhai's jujube cake is a classic. The skin on the outside is crispy and crispy, and the jujube paste on the inside is very strong. It has been sold for many years. "Caizhizhai" was the place where you could find the most cake cakes in Hangzhou twenty years ago. Before the Chinese New Year, my family always brought me here to buy Caizhizhai watermelon seeds, but I was more obsessed with the candy and tea food here, and I cried and ate it all over again.

Name: Rice cake

Brand: Caizhizhai

The rice cakes here are special, with rose petals. This snack was available when Caizhizhai was founded in 1928. It is called "rice cake", but it is actually a fermented rice cake, not a glutinous rice cake as Jiangsu and Zhejiang understand. The sweetness is quite high. The red one is rose juice, and then the top is dotted with roses.

In fact, Huaiyang's flower cakes are the truly vivid color and fragrance. Starting from the "boat banquet" in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, their beauty has long surpassed the imaginary bed of Ximen Qing. When Teacher Acheng went to Venice, he took a copy of "Yangzhou Painting Boat Record" with him. The romance and emotion of Eastern Venice flew to Italy.

Invite "traders in Wu" to negotiate business, and boat food has become a social tool. At the Wumen banquet, cold dishes are served with wine and vegetables, then the dishes are stir-fried, with exquisite snacks, and finally the big dishes are served. The big dishes are often finished with fish, creating the flavor of "having more than enough to eat". The chef understands the psychology of diners during the meal, and the snacks are becoming more and more detailed, and they cannot be carved into beams and painted buildings. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, not only officials and businessmen, but also literati and literati enjoyed banquets on cruise ships. In addition to delicious cakes, they must also satisfy the aroma, softness, waxy, slippery, fresh and shaped needs, in order to perfectly present the owner's elegance. In the Dream of Red Mansions, when Grandma Liu entered the Grand View Garden for the second time, the exquisite snacks she ate were the boat point.

At that time, the cakes had the opportunity to finally sublimate into an "eye-catching" type. Zhang Dai, a great scholar in the late Ming Dynasty who loved Hangzhou as much as me, recorded the "hawthorn cake","pine nut","white round","preserved olive" and "abalone snail with bone" in "Tao An Dream Memory"."It is actually the most tangible evidence of the exquisite classification of fancy cakes. The first hawthorn was used for sacrifice or viewing. Ancient people had a strong sense of ceremony when it came to cake. Later, the "hawthorn cake" given to gods in those days was combined with the "hawthorn cake" eaten by humans. I boldly speculated that the most important part of the eight pieces in Beijing was drawn from this. They usually showed people with the simple appearance of a hawthorn pot helmet, and at most a small flower is printed with carmine red on top, indicating the hidden meaning of spring. Suzhou's hawthorn cake took off its armor directly, and the square and red hawthorn cake looked like rouge jelly. It can be seen that the south is much more unrestrained when it comes to making cakes.

What's even more extreme is the "abalone snail with bones" in "Jin Ping Mei". It is the kind with demonic aura in flower cakes. If butter is mixed with mutton fat and honey (to increase viscosity), and then it is poured into ice water. If it spirals into a snail shape, it is an abalone snail. The sentence "Red Crispy Hands, Yellow rattan Wine" in Lu You's "Red Crispy Hands" describes Lu You's lover Tang Wan's hands as delicate as pink butter with rouge when she is a girl. In fact, Zhang Dai was the initiator of using rouge to dye his fingers and make a girl's version of "abalone snail with bones". In ancient times, the flashy words in the mouth can be a tribute to heaven, a dressing of the big scene, and even a poetic tool to seduce women.

Suzhou people may just look back and smile: "We have a long history and our differences are clear." Traditional Suzhou sugar rice cakes include white sugar osmanthus sugar rice cakes and brown sugar rice cakes. Lard rice cakes are generally large pieces, including rose, mint, jujube paste, and crystal. The common smell is red rose, the green one is mint, and a little sweet-scented osmanthus is sprinkled on the surface, just like the pleasant red and fast green in "Dream of the Red Chamber". When making, mix it with sugar suet that has been marinated for more than three days in advance to allow the sugar to completely penetrate into the suet. Only by biting down the rice cake can you send the sentence from the depths of your soul: It's so fragrant!

Name: Rose Sauce Honey Cake

Brand: Jiangnan Chun

Jiangnan Spring's rose sauce honey cake is actually a Soviet-style lard rice cake. Every bite is embedded with rose petals, and the whole rose fragrance is very strong.

In November of the lunar calendar (Winter Solstice Festival), children in Suzhou eat Winter Solstice dumplings like the whole of Jiangnan. In the twelfth month of the lunar calendar (the twelfth lunar month), when young children can eat a piece of lard cake, it is heaven. But no matter how anxious you are, you can't eat the lard rice cake raw. The lard rice cake is pickled raw suet, so the lard rice cake is a semi-finished product. It was a cake that looked the least flowery, but was actually the most flowery. It was full of lard flowers! Cut the lard rice cake into slices. One way to eat is to beat the eggs up, pour a layer of egg liquid on the rice cake, and fry it in a pan. Another way to eat it is wrapped in spring rolls and fried in skin. On the first day of the New Year in Suzhou, there is always fried rice cakes in the afternoon. You can also wrap the rice cakes with lard and fry them in an oil pan until they are crispy on the outside and glutinous on the inside. Add different flavors of lard rice cakes to get mint and rose flavor spring rolls. Osmanthus dumplings, red bean dumplings, wine sour circles, etc. are all supporting roles.

As early as the Song Dynasty, there was a proverb that "Su Lake is ripe, the world is abundant", and cakes were also given first. There are four calligraphy artists: Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Mi Fu and Cai Xiangsong. Pastries did not reach their heyday until the Qing Dynasty. In the first year of Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty (1821), Huang Qiting, a native of Cixi, Zhejiang Province, wandered to Suzhou. He went to the downtown area of Changmen, which was praised by Cao Xueqin as "the most prosperous and romantic place in the world of mortals", and had the prototype of the oldest existing pastry shop,"Huang Tianyuan". At that time, Huang Tianyuan, Yan Jufu, Le Wanxing, Xie Fuyuan, and Liu Dexing were also known in the industry as "four pillars and one pillar", and they were also famous in the world as "Huang, Yan, Le, Xie Jia and one willow".

Although people in Jiangnan like sweetness and sweetness, they are still very precise when they play tricks. The ancestor of the "Nanpai" pastry actually refers to Suzhou. Regarding pastry, Suzhou people spend it meticulously and strictly follow the rules of spring cakes, summer cakes, autumn crisps, and winter sugar. They dare not say anything about health preservation, but at the level of nourishing the heart, at least the name is either "beautiful" or "colorful". The "Picture of Prosperity in Suzhou" written by Xu Yang, a great court painter in the Qing Dynasty, shows the importance of Suzhou flower cakes. They prefer to eat cakes and send cakes according to special customs. The name "No. 1 Scholar Fragrant Cake" is clearly stated. In the painting, there is a tea food shop next to the Mudu Bridge, which hangs five signboards: "Cheese Crispy","Osmanthus Dew","Jade Dew Cream","Zhuangyuan Cake", and "Taishi Cake (also known as Taishi Cake)". Each type of cake has a "specialty store", which shows its development.

My good friend "Sister" is a Suzhou gourmand. She told me that her memory of the New Year when I was a child was that my mother cut the sugar rice cake into strips and fried it in egg white. It was very fragrant. On the first day of the first lunar month (Spring Festival) every year, the "Four Famous Danes" in Suzhou pastry circles are popular. Children can have a lot of white sugar (yellow sugar) osmanthus sugar rice cake, rose mint lard rice cake, and small dumplings. After eating, it means that cakes (high) are prosperous all year round, round and sweet.

There is also an interesting "waist support cake" in Suzhou. It is eaten by the elderly. It is steamed with glutinous rice flour and is thinner and thinner than sugar rice cakes. "Slice the rice cakes into short strips, and fry them with green oil until tender and yellow. Every year I hold on to the wind, and the strange thing is that Niang Wu has a slender waist." It is talking about the "fried rice cakes" on the second day of February. Elderly people in Suzhou usually go to century-old shops such as Wanfuxing and Huang Tianyuan to buy waist cakes. Cai Yun of the Qing Dynasty described this in "Wu Yu":"February 2 is spring, supporting and persuading each other to eat flower cakes. Support firewood and rice to grow healthy, and don't cherish the hard work of bones and bones all year round." "Flowers" indicate the power of life just like spring flowers, and "supporting cakes" are certainly eligible to be included in the list of spring supplements.

Break your fingers, the calendar for eating cakes in Suzhou is very long! On the 15th day of the first lunar month (Lantern Festival), eat sugar dumplings. On the Qingming Festival in the third month of the lunar calendar, eat green dumplings. On the 14th day of the fourth month of the lunar calendar, for the purpose of "crushing immortals", you need to eat immortal cakes. On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month (Dragon Boat Festival), eat rice dumplings. Eat mung bean cake, mint cake, and rice maple cake in June of the lunar calendar. Eat cowpea cake and red bean cake in the seventh month of the lunar calendar. On the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar (Mid-Autumn Festival), eat osmanthus strip cake, moon cake, osmanthus sugar sweet potato, osmanthus sugar taro, and cooked lotus root. On the ninth day of the ninth lunar month (Double Ninth Festival), eat Double Ninth Cake. In October of the lunar calendar, eat pumpkin dumplings... As soon as cakes spread to Hangzhou, everything was sold!

Name: Double Brewing Group

Brand: Jiangnan Chun

Hangzhou Double Brewing Group has always been the best seller in pastries. It is very light. The glutinous rice dumplings outside have no seasoning. There are only bean paste and sesame stuffing in the core, so it is called Double Brewing, which has been a hit for decades.

If you have to talk about a seasonal flower cake, then the "lotus cake" can only be considered half of it. It may not be eaten in summer, but is only for the elderly and the elderly. I think the way to eat it is to soak it in cold boiled water (or drinking water) until the lotus cake melts. I steamed it against the water, but I didn't see the cake paste spread out in the shape of a lotus flower, but anyway, I was confused in the paste, and I could only brainstorm the "lotus pond moonlight".

The taste is more like the legendary soft and fragrant cake in Yuan Mei's "Suiyuan Food List":"Suzhou Dulin Bridge is the first. The second is Huqiu Cake, and Xi Shi's family comes second. Baoen Temple outside Nanjing Gate ranks third."

Name: Lotus Cake
Brand: Jiangnan Chun

The instructions say,"Then according to the taste, mix in the minced meat, minced fish, carrot paste, etc. and serve it." When I saw the amount of beef I poured, I knew it was lotus cake for over-age babies. This century-old Hangzhou snack is more delicious than expected!

The thing I ate most when I was a child was actually Dingsheng cake dyed with red yeast flour and stuffed with bean paste. "When Suzhou people get married, have children, and move, they eat more Dingsheng Cake." Sister sister said. This cake was originally called "Dingsheng Cake" or "Dingtenon Cake". Legend has it that during the Jianyan period of Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty, Jin Wushu withdrew from Lin 'an and entered Suzhou City. In this battle, the Song army won a complete victory, and the fixed tenon cakes given by the people of Suzhou made great contributions. Because of the pronunciation of "Dingsheng" and "Dingsheng", Han Shizhong named this cake "Dingsheng Cake." Because the word "Dingsheng Cake" has a good taste for good fortune, Suzhou people have since regarded Dingsheng Cake as a commonly used cake when giving gifts to relatives and friends on birthdays, birthdays, further studies, and festive festivals, as well as Shangliang Daji Cake. Dingsheng Cake is also used as a snack at a banquet.

Name: Dingsheng Cake

Brand: Jiangnan Chun

The words printed on the Dingsheng Cake of "Jiangnan Spring" are a combination of calligraphy "Shou" and "Ding"(the top corresponds to the word "Ding" and the bottom corresponds to the word "Shou"), which not only retains the ancient meaning, but also has aesthetic innovation.

When I grew up, I could eat two muffins at Yuanshan Hotel in Taiwan. It turned out that it was the traditional red bean muffins in Suzhou. The ratio of lard to rice flour seemed simple, but it was both the secrets of lips and teeth heaven. It tasted fine and loose. Old people in Suzhou will go to Suzhou Guixiang Village to eat simple versions of muffins. For those like me who like to eat red bean muffins or pumpkin muffins, the Zhou's pastry stall at the entrance of Jingwen Primary School in Peishi Street is also good. The children who go there to study are so happy!

Happiness cannot be compared in terms of cakes.

Dingsheng Cake is now standard breakfast for many students for exams. But ancient students should eat better! "Wu Zhong Ji Lu" says that the dry food brought by literati and scholars to participate in the imperial examination is actually five-spice cakes: "Serve white glutinous rice and japonica rice for 28 points (" Drinking Food and Taking Shi Jian "is divided into 26 points), and dry gorgon euryale fruit 1 point, ginseng, atractylodes rhizome, tuckahoe, and amomum fruit total 1 point." In addition to strengthening the spleen, nourishing the stomach, and replenishing qi, this cake has the homophonic meaning of "cake" and "high", and it also contains the beauty of rising step by step.

After high school, Da Nai Cake, a food made by officials and noble families in the Song Dynasty in "Shanjia Qing Gong", was more popular: "Big plums are living beings, peeled and carved out the cores, blanched with white plum and licorice soup, and used honey and pine nut meat, Terminalia (peeled), walnut meat (peeled), melon kernels are crushed, filled to the brim, and steamed in a small steamer. This is called Nai Cake. If you are not ripe, your spleen will be damaged."

When you look at the recipe, you know that eating cakes in front of you is anxious and eating cakes leisurely later.

The spread of diversified snacks from Suzhou to Hangzhou is closer to the style of Zhu Yizun's "Shi Xian Hong Mi" in the Qing Dynasty. For example, when he wrote about rose cakes, they were not as syrup as rose cakes in Yunnan today."Mash the roses to remove the juice, add sugar with the dregs, and mold the cakes. Roses and sweet-scented osmanthus flowers can be removed without leaving the juice. Flowers, chrysanthemums and leaves can be removed. The same method is used for osmanthus cakes."

The "Neifu Rose Fire Pot" inside feels lost because it is too difficult."One pound of flour, four taels of sesame oil, and four taels of white sugar are melted in hot water, and they are mixed evenly to make cakes. Use rose candy, add walnut white kernels, hazelnut pine melon seeds, and almond seeds, boil seven times, peel and tip. Rub mint and cumin evenly to make filling. Sesame seeds are stuck on both sides and it's hot." In fact, this style is more like the current Begonia cake in Suzhou. It has nuts and is most irresistible when it is freshly baked. It has bean paste and pork fillings, and it is topped with winter melon sugar, pine nut meat, and melon seeds. It is extremely sweet. Begonia cake is named because it looks like a Begonia flower. Like plum blossom cake, it is tangible but not tangible. The plum blossom cake is large at the top and small at the bottom, in a five-prism shape. The red, green and green shredded sugar on the surface are very bright, and the oily chopped green onion is inlaid next to it. Other crabapple cakes have it, and so does it. I remember eating it all over my mouth when I was a kid!

Name: Rose and Flower Cake

Brand: Caizhizhai

Caizhizhai's rose and flower cake has a relatively low moisture content and is relatively dry. But the petals are very pure, a lot, not much syrup. The taste is relatively light and is very suitable for people like us who are afraid of sweetness.

Name: Lotus leaf crisp

Brand: Caizhizhai

The ancient charred salt cake consisted of sesame oil, white sugar, salt, chopped pepper, and chopped fennel, which transformed into the present "lotus leaf crisp".

The salty lotus leaf crisp has a little sesame and peanut aroma, full of nostalgia, but it still "flowers" simply. When there was no connection between green and yellow, a new generation of fancy pastry masters was born. As a result, Hangzhou's "Zhiweiguan" became famous. Cat ears, lotus flower cakes, Longjing tea cakes... became new favorites and intangible cultural heritage.

When I was hungry later in the night, I still had thoughts on the "Plum Blossom Soup Cake" in "Shanjia Qing Gong". The only romantic flower cake in ancient books was unfortunately lost. If I wanted to eat it, I had to make it myself!

Listening to that story, you can even smell the fragrance of plum blossoms from Lin Hejing's family. "There is an expert on Zimao Mountain in the spring who tried to make this offer. Soak white plum and sandalwood in water at first, and mix the dough to make wonton skins. Use five iron chisels with plum patterns to pick them up in each stack. After cooking, they will be too full of chicken juice. Each customer only has more than 200 flowers, so you can never forget the plum blossoms even if you want to eat them. Later Liu Yutang Yuan Gang had a poem he: "It's like flying jade floating on the West Lake at the foot of a lonely mountain."

Thinking about this artistic conception makes me hungry. It's important for me to go downstairs to buy a flower cake to satisfy my cravings. It is beautiful in the distance, but eating comes first!

The goddess asked

What flower cakes do you like?

"The perfect responsibility is to accept dreams.”

--Borges

Food Bless You!

Consultant for China International Food Expo

Producer of "God's Table"