#1 sweet cake
sweet cake (also known as rice cake) is a holiday delicacy made by grinding rice into powder in Chaoshan and southern Fujian regions, then adding sugar (white sugar or red sugar) and steaming it in a mold. In Guangdong Province, the sweet cakes in Haifeng, Shanwei and Shantou are more famous.
#2 Sweet cake
It is said that sweet cake was first used for worship and worshipping ancestors in the New Year's Day. It was later become a food for the Spring Festival, entrusting the wish of "high every year". Sweet cakes usually start steaming from the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month (commonly known as Little New Year). Sweet cakes are "New Year's Bread". Steamed sweet cakes cannot be eaten immediately, and they have to wait until the second day of the Chinese New Year to open the cakes. By the second day of the Chinese New Year, the children at home got up early in the morning and surrounded the table to watch their parents open cakes. These considerations are much less now.
There is a folk proverb that "I can't pound sweet cakes" is circulating in Chaoshan area. In the past, Chaoshan area had a large population and a small land area, and the natural disasters were frequent. Many Chaoshan people traveled across the ocean to make a living through Zhanglin Port (now Shantou Port ). It is said that once a ship owner named Cai Yan went to the ship to count the goods, and his mother also came on board. Cai’s mother was surprised to see that there were large pieces of sweet cakes in the passengers’ luggage (because Chaoshan area was relatively poor at that time, and she didn’t usually steam sweet cakes except for the New Year), so she asked, “It’s a long time to spend the moon, why do you have sweet cakes?” A passenger answered, “Is this helpless to cook sweet cakes!” Everyone agreed. Cai’s mother said again, “If you have sweet cakes to eat, you can’t help it?” Cai Yan then replied, “If you travel abroad smoothly, the itinerary will take 10 or 20 days; if you encounter wind and waves, the itinerary will take more than a month. If you don’t bring some dry food, how can you survive these days? Sweet cakes are not easy to deteriorate, so you can carry some as dry food.” Cai’s mother knew the difficulties after hearing this. Nowadays, during festivals, there is still a custom of making sweet cakes in Chaoshan area, but the meaning is very different. The production of
sweet cakes must go through the process of making powder, dissolving sugar, mixing, putting into a box, and steaming. First wash the glutinous rice raw materials and soak them in clean water to remove the water and drain them. Then put them in stone mortars and pound them into rice flour (commonly known as glutinous rice cake). It takes a lot of time to pound rice cakes. It has to be sieved at least two or three times. The finer the powder, the better. Therefore, there is a local saying that "sweet cakes are good and hard to pound." Finally, stir the sugar water and glutinous rice flour in proportion to form a paste, and then steam it over high heat.
#3min sweet cake
Article source: "Guangdong Rural Food"
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