Leaf-Wrapped Rice Cake 树叶搭

How it is made

In the Xuwen version described on the Yangcheng Evening News (羊城晚报) site, glutinous rice is soaked in water and ground into flour, sugar syrup is mixed in to make a sticky paste, and this is pinched by hand into thin, flat rounds that serve as the skin. The filling usually combines sesame oil and fragrant powder with fried peanuts mixed with sugar, sesame seeds, shredded coconut and candied winter melon; savoury cakes add shrimp or diced pork. Two or three jackfruit leaves are pressed onto both sides of each cake before it is steamed.

A CCTV-2 programme reported by Zhanjiang Daily (湛江日报) shows another method. Shredded coconut is fried and mixed with lard, white sugar, black sesame and crushed peanuts for a sweet filling. The herb tian'ai (田艾) is washed, squeezed dry and cooked with brown sugar. A dough of glutinous rice flour and sugar water is boiled, then kneaded with more glutinous rice flour and the torn tian'ai. The cakes are filled, sealed, topped with jackfruit leaves and steamed for about 20 minutes.

Flavour and texture

Cakes come sweet or savoury. They are sticky and soft and keep for a fairly long time. The jackfruit leaves give off a light fragrance once steamed, and the CCTV-2 presenter summed up the Zhanjiang cake as sweet, fragrant, soft and chewy.

Where it comes from

In Xuwen the cakes began as a snack that households made at the Lunar New Year, and they remain one of the cakes each home prepares for the festival. The cake is also a lucky symbol, since locals regard the jackfruit tree as a tree of long life, and it is given to friends and relatives at weddings and house-moving celebrations. Many people in Zhanjiang start making them after the Minor Snow solar term (小雪). Xuwen now has specialist workshops that sell the cakes and post them to customers.