Puffed Brown Sugar Pastry 椪饼

Puffed Brown Sugar Pastry (椪饼) is a hollow pastry from Tainan (台南) filled with brown or white sugar. It is also called 'fragrant cake' (香餅) and 'bulging cake' (凸餅), and 'confinement-month cake' (月內餅) after its old role as a food for new mothers.

Ingredients

According to a Tainan culture figure quoted by ETtoday in 2016, it is made mainly from maltose, brown sugar and sesame oil, with no colouring or raising agent added, and the Tainan City Government said the same year that the pastries are all made by hand. The Tainan City Government's entry for Baolaixiang Bakery (寶來香餅鋪) in Taiwan's tourism open data describes its version as about the size of a meat bun, smooth and brown-sugar coloured, with the shop's name 'Baolaixiang' in a square stamp on top, and suggests trying it on a visit to the Shuixian Temple Market (水仙宮市場).

How it is eaten

The traditional way to eat Puffed Brown Sugar Pastry is fried with an egg. Sesame oil is heated in a pan until fragrant, a small hole is broken in the centre of the pastry, an egg is cracked into the hollow and the whole thing is fried slowly in the sesame oil until the egg is fully cooked.

Where it comes from

In old Tainan, known as Fucheng (府城), the pastry was a standard snack and tonic for women during the month of confinement after giving birth (坐月子), and the Tainan City Government's entry calls it a traditional Fucheng food therapy. According to the same culture figure quoted by ETtoday, the Tainan Cultural Affairs Bureau repositioned it as a Tainan speciality under the name 'Tainan Fucheng fragrant cake' (台南府城香餅). In 2016 the city government defended it as a well-known Tainan gift for happy occasions, after a city councillor criticised the mayor for handing it out.