Weihai Sweet Potato Steamed Cake 起糕

Where it comes from

The Weihai city government describes sweet potato as one of the main grains of farming families in the past; in poor households it made up almost half of the year's food. After the autumn harvest, families sliced or shredded fresh sweet potatoes and sun-dried them, and the Weihai Archives (威海市档案馆) records that this dried sweet potato was milled into flour for steaming qigao.

In 2023 the Weihai culture and tourism bureau and partner bodies named ten 'famous pastries' to try in Weihai, and a 'sweet potato flour qigao' (地瓜面气糕), written with a different qi character, from the Huatang Tianrun Hotel (华唐天润酒店) was one of them.

How it is made

Liu Zhifu (刘致福), a writer born in Wendeng (文登, now a district of Weihai), described his mother's method in People's Literature (人民文学) in 2020. She sifted the sweet potato flour over and over until it was finer than noodle flour. Water was brought to the boil under a steaming rack, a cloth was laid on it while the steam rose, and the flour was sifted onto the cloth through a finer sieve, layer after layer, to a set thickness. The pot was then sealed with its lid and steamed over a fierce fire.

Flavour and texture

In Liu's account the dark, hard sweet potato flour comes out of the pot as a chestnut-coloured, wobbling block like a large sponge, with air holes running through it layer by layer. It is cut into squares with a knife and tastes sweet, soft and smooth.