Fu Qingguang Cake has well-selected ingredients and a special production method. It looks golden, smells attractive, and tastes crispy and delicious. It is far superior to Sichuan sesame cakes and northern sesame cakes. The light cake is made of refined flour as the main raw material, with appropriate salt and alkali. Add water and knead it into a dough. Knead it into a cake shape, pat it with sesame seeds, and punch a hole in the middle. After it wakes up slightly, it is placed in a special cake oven that has been baked red in advance. Inside, the pine needles newly picked that year are used to bake them until crispy and then shovel them down.
Fuqingguang cake made by this special method has a history of four hundred years. According to legend, during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, Qi Jiguang led his army to Fuqing to quell the Japanese invasion. In order to attack the enemy and annihilate the Japanese pirates in time, the army often did not use fire to cook meals, but the soldiers of the Qi Army made homemade northern sesame biscuits as dry food. This kind of sesame cake is the prototype of Fuqing Guangbing. Later, the soldiers discovered that although sesame cakes could satisfy their hunger, eating too much would easily lead to internal heat, were difficult to digest, and often caused constipation. The clever people of Fuqing added salt to the dough to increase the taste, alkali to aid digestion, and sesame seeds to moisturize the gastrointestinal tract and relieve internal heat. This improved pancake became the favorite dry food of Qi Jiajun soldiers, and made a great contribution to Qi Jiajun's annihilation of Japanese pirates in Niutian stronghold. In order to commemorate Qi Jiguang's achievements in pacifying Japan, people called this kind of pancake Guangpan.
It is said that even the most brilliant Fuqing cake masters can only bake this crispy and fragrant Fuqing cake in Fuqing. Once they leave Fuqing and bake it elsewhere, the cake will not be so fragrant or crispy. . Some people say that this is related to the water quality in Fuqing, while others say that only by using pine needles collected in the Fuqing mountains as fuel can such fragrant light cakes be baked.
Among the hundreds of local snacks in Fuzhou, light cakes are the coarsest and cheapest. Its raw materials are only flour, alkaline noodles, salt, and a little sesame. It is shaped like a silver dollar. Compared with Beijing sesame sauce biscuits and Jiangsu Huangqiao biscuits that are oiled and seasoned, they have neither class nor taste. However, don’t underestimate it, this light cake still has a lot of potential.
According to the records of Fuzhou Prefecture: In the 42nd year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1563), Qi Jiguang led his army into Fujian to pursue and annihilate the Japanese pirates. Unwilling to keep rainy days, the army could not lift the stove, so Qi Jiguang ordered him to bake a Grow the simplest cakes, string them with hemp ropes and hang them on the soldiers as dry food, which greatly facilitates combat and annihilation of the enemy. Later, this small cake became popular among the people and was not only widely eaten, but also became a necessary offering for worshiping gods and ancestors. Later generations, in memory of Qi Gong, called this kind of cake "Guang Cake".
In Fuzhou, people usually call cakes without sesame as "guang cake" and those with sesame as "Fuqing cake". But in Fuqing City, 60 kilometers away from Fuzhou, people call cakes with sesame on the surface "guang cake". In terms of "tasty", in comparison, the light cake made by Fuqing people is slightly better.
Fuzhou people used to use charcoal ovens to bake cakes. Now, to save trouble, they mostly use electric ovens. The Fuqing people still retain their own way of making light cakes. It is not only fresh, but also interesting. To exaggerate, it can be called a labor art that integrates music and dance.
They use a large clay-covered vat nearly two meters high and about one meter in diameter to bake the cakes. First use bundles of pine branches to light a huge fire in the vat to burn the walls of the vat "white", leaving only embers at the bottom of the vat. Then, two people work together to put the prepared cake embryo into the vat, and quickly and accurately stick it on the vat. On the wall, if he were a little slower, he was afraid that his bare arms would be blistered. Since they were facing a large fire pit when baking the cakes, both of them were shirtless regardless of winter or summer. One by one, they passed the embryos, and one by one, they stuck the embryos into the tank. Their bodies stretched, yawned, and leaned up. They moved quickly and cooperated tacitly. The crackling sound of the cakes was like a musical accompaniment, and the rhythm was very strong. In less than ten minutes, hundreds of light cakes are all pasted, and then slowly cooked over charcoal fire. It is really eye-opening. The light cakes baked in this large vat are golden and very crispy.
The small shops that sell out all the cakes in downtown Fuzhou are all stores and workshops mixed together. Fuqing's light cakes are made by workshops and distributed to vendors for sale. Therefore, in Fuqing, you can see stalls selling out pancakes everywhere along the streets. The pile of light cakes on the stall was like a hill, which turned into a street scene in Fuqing.
In the past, bare cakes were eaten by the common people and could not be used in elegant places. Maybe it's because of the change of fortune. Nowadays, big restaurants and hotels in Fuzhou also cut the cake into clams, stuff it with minced meat, steamed pork with rice flour, porridge, and green vegetables, and pour some vinegar and garlic sauce on it, and serve it as a banquet dish. A special snack is served to guests.
No one would have thought that Guangbing would be as prosperous as it is today.