I come from the Chaoshan area of ??Guangdong, and we have a dazzling array of specialties, but what I can’t forget the most is the rice cakes and sweet cakes that every household in Chaoshan makes during the Chinese New Year.
Every year around the 25th day of the lunar calendar, when the weather gets colder, my mother starts making sweet cakes. Mix five or six pounds of glutinous rice flour with one pound of sticky rice flour and set aside. Weigh four to five pounds of brown sugar and white sugar, add an appropriate amount of water and boil it into a hot, thick brown syrup. Next, let’s create a perfect combination of these two ingredients. The syrup and powder are mixed in the heat. The hot syrup stimulates the deep aroma of rice. With the stirring and kneading of mother's iron sand palm, the sweet cake paste becomes even and delicate. The next step is to wrap the sweet cake paste in plastic wrap or cloth and put it on the boiler to steam.
This process usually takes several hours. The longer it is steamed, the more colorful the sweet cake will be. That's it after it's formed. It looks ordinary, right? After the sweet cake is cooled down, it will be very hard to cut directly, so our ancestors invented this method? Egg-fried sweet cake.
Cut the sweet cakes into evenly thick slices and soak them in the egg liquid. Then turn on the heat, add oil and sweet cakes.
The oil and eggs effectively prevent the sweet cake from sticking to the pan and add flavor to the sweet cake. The fried sweet cake is sprinkled with a thin layer of white sugar. The inside is soft and sweet, and the outside is slightly burnt. It is even more delicious when paired with powdered sugar.
I still remember when I ate egg-fried sweet cakes for the first time as a child, I was so surprised that I ate ten pieces in a row. I wondered how the originally hard sweet cakes became so delicious? The combination of two seemingly unrelated ingredients creates a wonderful flavor.
The reason why sweet cakes have an important position in the hearts of every Chaoshan people is not only because of its delicious taste, nor just because it is a symbol representing the Spring Festival, but also because it plays a role in the difficult times of most Chaoshan people. Hold special memories. My parents grew up in difficult times in China, when a small piece of sweet cake was the only sweet treat of the year. A piece of sweet cake supports the family's hospitality etiquette from the first to the fifteenth day of the lunar month. Even if the sweet cake becomes moldy, you have to gently brush it away. When the guests come, cut a small piece and cook soup for the guests; the children are greedy , each person took a small piece and chewed it slowly.
The end of the year is coming again, and this year’s sweet cakes will also be very sweet. Everyone in Jiaoji must remember to go home for dinner.