Wuzhen Sister-in-Law Cakes 乌镇姑嫂饼

Wuzhen Sister-in-Law Cakes (乌镇姑嫂饼) are small round pressed cakes of flour, sugar and sesame from Wuzhen (乌镇) in Tongxiang (桐乡), Zhejiang. The Wuzhen scenic area calls them the town's best-known pastry. In 2012 their making technique entered the fourth list of Zhejiang provincial intangible cultural heritage, according to China National Radio (央广网).

Ingredients and flavour

The Wuqing town gazetteer (乌青镇志), first compiled under the Qianlong reign (乾隆) of the Qing dynasty and later continued, lists the cakes among local products: very fine wheat flour mixed with sugar and sesame and pressed into round cakes, some with salt and pepper and some with plain white sugar, sweet and moist in taste. The Wuzhen scenic area describes the mix as toasted flour, cooked-down white sugar, hulled sesame and rendered lard, stirred evenly, steamed and pressed in a mould into small crisp cakes, close in ingredients to crisp sugar candy (酥糖). The finished cake is sweet with a salty edge.

Where it comes from

The story told in Wuzhen places the cake more than a hundred years ago at the Tianshun cake shop (天顺糕饼店) of a family named Fang (方). The owner taught the recipe only to his son and daughter-in-law, not to his daughter. Out of spite the daughter stirred a handful of salt into her sister-in-law's batch, and customers praised the result as fragrant and sweet with a salty note. The shop then renamed the cake 'sister-in-law cake', claiming the two women mixed it together. China National Radio quotes Xu Liqiao (徐立巧), an inheritor of the technique who heads the Taifengzhai (泰丰斋) cake business; Taifengzhai has set up a Sister-in-Law Cake museum.