Daye Stamped Rice Cakes 大冶印子粑

How it is made

The name means cakes printed from a wooden mould. A 2023 essay by a Daye writer in Chutian Metropolis Daily (楚天都市报) describes cakes about the size of the mouth of a small teacup, printed with flowers, birds, chickens or fish. There are three kinds: red cakes coloured with sorghum, for ever-redder days; white cakes, dotted with red after steaming, for harvest and celebration; and green cakes made with artemisia (蒿子), a wish for good weather and strong crops.

White cakes are made from glutinous rice flour, and red cakes add sorghum flour; the flour is kneaded with water into dough. A palm-sized piece is pressed into the mould, which is then struck hard against a wooden chopping board to knock out a patterned cake. The cakes are laid out in a winnowing basket and steamed, and come out soft, springy and smelling of rice. Before households had refrigerators, steamed cakes were spread out to dry and stored in a vat of cold water, where they kept for one or two months.

How it is eaten

For a savoury dish the cakes are stir-fried with salt, soy sauce and chopped spring onion; for a sweet one they are fried in oil and dipped in white sugar. They can also be simmered in chicken soup. The essay's writer recalls a grandmother's sugar-fried cakes, fried golden on both sides with sugar water poured round the edge of the wok, as crisp outside and chewy within.

Where it comes from

Village elders quoted in the essay say the cakes have been made for more than a thousand years. The essay ties the cakes to a local legend of Wang Mingwei (王明畏), an upright official of the late Tang who, dismissed from office, withdrew to Jianshan Hall (尖山殿) in Daye; villagers built a Tuzhu temple (土主庙) in his memory. From the 17th day of the second lunar month to the 3rd day of the third, villagers carry the Tuzhu figure through the villages, and each household stacks its stamped cakes into a "ba mountain" (粑山) to welcome it.