Shaowu Heel-Shaped Rice Cakes 邵武脚掌糍
Shaowu Heel-Shaped Rice Cakes is featured among the local specialties of Fujian.
Shaowu Heel-Shaped Rice Cakes (邵武脚掌糍) are thin, dished rounds of cooked rice paste from Shaowu (邵武) in Nanping (南平), Fujian, pinched so that a stack of them looks like a human heel. In the Shaowu dialect they are called kao zhan ti (靠粘提), and they are a New Year food made at home.
How it is made
Japonica and indica rice are mixed in proportion, soaked and ground into a rice slurry. The slurry is combined with mountain herbs and cooked into a paste, then left to cool. The half-cooked paste is rolled into strips and cut into rounds, and each round is pinched into a thin piece with a raised rim and a hollow centre, as if a heel had pressed it.
Five or six of these pieces are stacked and steamed in a bamboo steamer. Once steamed, the layers, each about a thumb thick, form a small stacked cake shaped much like a heel. A home cook from Yanshan Town (沿山镇) in Shaowu steams them with rice-flour pork (米粉肉) made from pork belly laid on top, so that the pork moistens the cakes and the meat, rich but not greasy, takes up the rice aroma.
How it is eaten
Shaowu people count the heel cakes, together with another steamed rice snack, baoci (包糍), among the classic snacks of the New Year, remembered as a mother's cooking. The dish most looked forward to at the New Year's Eve dinner is the cakes stir-fried with beef (脚掌糍炒牛肉). When the steamer is opened, the steam carries a scent of pine needles.
Questions before you order
Why are Shaowu Heel-Shaped Rice Cakes named after a heel?
Each piece of rice paste is pinched thin with a raised rim, as if pressed by a heel, and a steamed stack of five or six pieces takes on the shape of a heel.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.