Steamed Sponge Cake 水蒸蛋糕

How it is made

Unlike Western cakes made with butter and flavourings, Hsinchu steamed cake uses only eggs, flour and sugar, and no fat goes into it. Each cake is built in three layers: a base of batter, then the filling, then a top layer of batter, before it is steamed. The Taiwanese culture website Bank of Culture quotes the second-generation owner Yang Huangchong (杨滉崇) on the details: the flour has to rest or it will not rise properly, and batter beaten too high leaves holes in the crumb while batter beaten too little turns dense. The shop has swapped its old steaming cabinet for gas burners and cut the sugar, but otherwise keeps to the original method and hand work.

Flavour and texture

The cake is soft, fine-grained and light, and because it contains no fat it does not taste greasy. Red bean was the original filling; Yuanming added taro and minced pork to suit both the sweeter southern Taiwanese taste and the saltier northern one.

Where it comes from

Yang Yuanming (杨渊明) opened the bakery in 1945, when goods were scarce, using American-aid flour, eggs and sugar. It first stood at the corner of two cinemas, the Hsinchu Theatre and the Lemin Theatre, and also sold snacks for moviegoers. Steamed cake was then a minor item beside bread, and only red bean was made. After the 1975 move the taro and pork fillings turned it into the shop's main product, and around 2001, under a government drive to promote one local product per town, it was chosen as one of Hsinchu City's ten top gifts.

Because the cakes are hard to make at an even weight, the founder sold them by weight, and the shop still does. In 2016 the city government's marketing office made Yuanming one of its visitor-information stations, and for the 2019 Hsinchu City Marathon the bakery planned to give runners its steamed cake in large pieces rather than small cut ones.