Huangshigang Baked Cake 黄石港饼

How it is made

Bakers start from more than ten ingredients, among them black and white sesame, powdered sugar, rock sugar, maltose, red and green candied peel and osmanthus. The steps run from mixing the dough and the filling, shaping the filling and wrapping it in layered pastry, to pounding the cake, shaking it in sesame and baking it. The dough has to be mixed to the right elasticity, since dough that is too soft or too hard affects the texture and quality. A saying sums up the work as "three parts pastry board, seven parts oven": baking is the most important step and needs strict, precise temperatures.

The craft is on Hubei's third provincial intangible cultural heritage list, under pastry-making techniques. At one Huangshi maker today, machines run every stage to keep up output, but workers still assist and control each step to guard the taste and quality.

Flavour and texture

The cake is shaped like a full moon, with a drum-like rim, and it sounds when tapped. Sesame covers the outside like golden armour. It is golden and crisp and smells strongly of sesame. One newer brand sells a thin, crisp version in a range of flavours.

Where it comes from

Huangshi's Dongchu Evening News traces the cake to the Jiaqing reign of the Qing dynasty and to the dragon-and-phoenix cake of the Liurenba (刘仁八) area of Daye (大冶), a wedding cake stamped with a dragon and phoenix. One story says Daye timber-raft traders took sesame cakes to Beijing as a gift and the Tongzhi Emperor renamed them "Ruyi" ("as you wish") cakes. Another links the name to the port: dockers and boatmen at Huangshigang, a Yangtze trading hub, ate these sesame cakes and carried them away. A state-owned Huangshi food factory set up in 1953 was dedicated to making the cake, which was first exported to Southeast Asia in 1979, and in 2011 the Ministry of Commerce recognised it as a China Time-honoured Brand.