Jiujiang Osmanthus Tea Cakes 九江茶饼

How it is made

The Jiujiang commerce bureau lists the raw materials as local wheat flour, black sesame grown on hill slopes, local camellia oil, osmanthus, maltose and soft white sugar. The camellia oil comes from Ruichang (瑞昌) and Wuning (武宁), and the osmanthus is local.

Good flour is mixed into a dough for the skin. Sugar, camellia oil, osmanthus and sesame are made into the filling, which is wrapped in the skin to form each cake. The cakes are then baked and baked a second time before they are finished.

Flavour and texture

Each cake is about 5 centimetres across and 2 centimetres thick, golden and domed in the middle, and light and crisp in the mouth. The bureau sums it up as thin and crisp, flaky and sweet. Locally it is called "four aromas in one" (四香合一), for the scent of camellia oil, the fragrance of osmanthus and the smell of the soda ash and baking soda in the cake.

Where it comes from

The city commerce bureau dates the cake to the Tang dynasty and calls it one of China's ten traditional famous cakes and one of Jiangxi's four great pastries. It quotes the poet Su Dongpo (苏东坡): "a small cake like chewing the moon, with flaky pastry and syrup inside" (小饼如嚼月，中有酥和饴). In the Ming and Qing periods, as trade through Jiujiang grew, tea cakes moved from teahouse kitchens to workshops, and passing merchants took them home as a Jiangzhou (江州, an old name for Jiujiang) specialty to give to relatives and friends.

How it is eaten

The cakes are meant to be eaten with tea. With a pot of Lushan Yunwu (庐山云雾) tea, the bureau suggests a cake with the matching "Yunwu" filling; with jasmine tea, a jasmine-flavoured cake.