Huilai Mung Bean Cakes 惠来绿豆饼
Huilai Mung Bean Cakes is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
Huilai Mung Bean Cakes (惠来绿豆饼) are flaky pastries filled with sweetened mung bean paste, made in Huilai County (惠来县) in Jieyang (揭阳), Guangdong. They are baked on an oiled griddle, and the making technique, registered under the name of Longjiang (隆江) town, is on Guangdong's provincial intangible heritage list.
How it is made
The filling starts with hulled mung beans, soaked until a bean crushes between finger and thumb, then steamed. At the Xiao Guihe sugar-cake shop (萧贵合糖饼铺) in Longjiang the cooled beans are ground twice, dried and tossed in a drum at 100°C, then mixed with white sugar and worked into a soft paste. The paste is pressed into a 40 cm square frame and cut into equal cubes.
The pastry has two parts: an outer dough of flour, oil, sugar and water, and an oil dough of flour and oil, called youxu (油酥), which gives the layers. A piece of oil dough is laid on the outer dough, pushed out into a tongue shape, rolled up and pressed into a disc; a cube of filling goes in the centre and the dough is closed and flattened. The cakes are set on an oiled square griddle, brushed with oil and turned over a slow fire until both sides are golden, about 20 minutes for a tray of 100.
Flavour and texture
Nanfang Daily describes a crisp, oily skin and a smooth filling with the fragrance of mung beans. The Xiao Guihe shop, run by Xiao Binglong (萧炳龙), keeps to his grandfather's recipe and adds no flavourings, relying on the natural fragrance of the beans, flour and oil.
How it is eaten
In Longjiang, Huilai Mung Bean Cakes are one of the offerings to the moon on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, and they are a common gift for guests and for people leaving home. Demand at the Xiao Guihe shop peaks at the Qingming and Mid-Autumn festivals. They are eaten fresh from the griddle with gongfu tea.
Where it comes from
Local tradition dates the cake to the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty. A story repeated in Nanfang Daily credits a cook named Su Shuncheng (苏顺成) in the fleet of Shi Lang (施琅), on the campaign to take Taiwan, with inventing it as dry rations for the ships. Today more than a hundred sugar-cake shops in Huilai make it. Xiao Guihe began learning his family's pastry craft in 1926 and opened his shop in the 1970s; Xiao Binglong is the third generation. The Huilai county government lists 'pastry-making technique (Longjiang mung bean cake making technique)' as a provincial heritage item announced on 30 November 2015.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-26. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.