Stone-Pressed Wheat Cake 石头馃

Stone-Pressed Wheat Cake (石头馃) is a flat, filled wheat-dough cake, a traditional snack of Huizhou (徽州) in Anhui. It takes its name from the stone laid on top of it while it cooks. It is also called 'soybean and pork cake' (黄豆肉粿), and a Huangshan University page says it was already well known in the Qing dynasty.

How it is made

A 2022 Anhui Net (安徽网) article on Yuliang (渔梁), an old town in Shexian (歙县), describes how the Zhang family's shop (张记) there makes it in the traditional way it has followed for three generations. Soybeans are roasted and ground. Pure fatty pork is cut into small dice and rendered in a pan until it is half turned to oil; the ground soybeans go in with salt and are mixed into the filling. The cake is then baked over a low flame with a heated brick pressed on it, and the fat squeezed out sizzles in the pan.

Flavour and texture

The weight gives a firmer, chewier cake, according to Huangshan University. The Anhui Net article sums up the result as fragrant, golden, crisp and flaky. Huangshan University also notes that it is cheap to make and does not spoil easily.

How it is eaten

It is a street snack. In Shexian, small snack shops along the streets and lanes are commonly seen with a flat pan set up and flat dough cakes in it under a glossy black stone, and the Zhang shop at Yuliang is described as the best known in the county.