White Sugar Cake 白糖糕

White Sugar Cake (白糖糕) in Nanchang (南昌) is a cake of glutinous-rice dough, fried golden and then rolled in a powdery coating. Chinese Wikipedia lists Nanchang white sugar cake among the city's snacks, beside clay-pot soup (瓦罐汤) and Nanchang fried rice noodles (南昌炒粉), and the Economic Daily (经济日报) calls it one of Nanchang's classic local snacks.

How it is made

In 2025 the Economic Daily reported on the Lao Nanchang Baitanggao (老南昌白糖糕) shop, the best known of the white sugar cake sellers in the Dashiyuan (大士院) quarter of old Nanchang. The raw cakes are made entirely by hand in a workshop: the glutinous rice is pounded, the dough kneaded and each cake shaped, and the unfried cakes travel to the shop laid out 70 to a tray. At the shop they are fried in oil and rolled in the coating. The owner has thought about using machines, but glutinous-rice flour behaves differently from wheat flour: as a machine warms up, the dough sticks to it.

Flavour and texture

The Economic Daily describes the cakes as fried to a golden colour, crisp and fragrant yet soft and sticky (酥香软糯). Dajiang (大江网), the Jiangxi news site, sums them up as sweet, fragrant, soft and glutinous (香甜软糯).

Where it comes from

Dajiang reported in 2023 that white sugar cake, along with beef fried rice noodles and the ox-tongue-shaped pastry niushetou (牛舌头), was once a popular snack at Wanhualou (万花楼), which the site describes as the only century-old ethnic-speciality brand in Nanchang's restaurant trade. Xiao Jian'an (肖建安) told the site that after the reform and opening-up era began, many veteran cooks left Wanhualou to open eateries of their own, and its snacks spread through Nanchang's streets. In 2023 a wave of fast-paced 'special forces' travel made white sugar cake one of the foods visitors to Nanchang set out to try. The Economic Daily counted more than ten shops selling it in Dashiyuan in 2024; at peak times the Lao Nanchang shop could sell over ten thousand a day.