There are many special snacks in Ningbo, among which the Melaleuca Cake in Fenghua Xikou is very famous. The real name of "the best cake in the world" is "Melaleuca cake", which was originally a small cake produced locally. The main raw materials are flour, taro powder, sugar, refined salt, vegetable oil, sesame, moss and so on. The method is to mix taro powder with flour, add seaweed, roll it into thin slices, then fold it and bake it with charcoal fire. The entrance is crisp and sweet. Speaking of this cake, I can't help but mention the innovative Wang Maolong. The farmer in Xikou is very clever. He groped to improve the processing method of cakes, made a special oven with yellow mud and added several sweet and salty flavors. The Melaleuca Cake made by him has a unique taste and later became a famous specialty of Xikou. But there is another reason to call it "the best cake in the world". Fenghua Xikou is the hometown of Chiang Kai-shek. After Jiang came to power, he missed the specialties of his hometown very much. He once sent someone to call the descendants of the Wangs to his side to bake cookies from his hometown for him, and kept asking people to taste them. This kind of biscuit became more and more famous and was finally called "the best cake in the world". This kind of cake uses little oil, especially no animal oil, which conforms to the nutritional concept of modern people. After the cake is made, it is not easy to go bad, and it can be guaranteed for two or three months at room temperature. The development of tourism has also promoted the prosperity of local flavor industries. Therefore, there are more and more characteristic cake shops in Xikou. Now, in addition to Wang Maolong's old shop, there are Wang Laotou's thousand-layer cake shop, Jiang Shengtai's old shop and Chen's shop. They are lined up on Wuling Road in Xikou Town, and there are dozens of them, large and small. Every family has a special oven, which pays attention to baking and selling now. The thousand-layer cake made by Jiang Shengtai's old shop is made of exquisite materials, using seaweed, a nutritious marine plant, and improving the traditional technology. It is made by thirteen processes, and the cake can reach 27 layers, and it won the "Best Taste Award" in the local flavor making competition.

Nowadays, Fenghua Xikou has become a famous tourist attraction, and "the best cake in the world" has also become a good gift for tourists to give to relatives and friends.

Tank, duck, dog

There is a shop with distinctive signs on the Chenghuangmiao Pedestrian Street in Ningbo. There are no words on it, but a jar, a duck and a dog are drawn. I didn't know what it was at first sight, but I didn't know it was a snack bar until I asked carefully. It turns out that the owner of this snack bar is surnamed Zhang, and his baby is called a dog. He made great efforts in making snacks, became more and more famous, and finally opened a snack bar. There must be signs in the shop, but Gou is illiterate. He had a brainwave and thought of replacing it with something in kind. In Ningbo dialect, the sound of "Zhang" is the same as "jar", the sound of "A" is the same as "duck", and the sound of "dog" is still "dog". So Zhang Agou's shop sign looks like this: a jar, a duck and a dog.

The most famous snack in this shop is glutinous rice balls. Just like Yuanxiao in the north, glutinous rice balls have changed from seasonal food to daily snacks. North Yuanxiao is mostly sweet stuffing, and glutinous rice flour is rough; Jiaozi in the south has all kinds of fillings, and the milled glutinous rice flour tastes delicate. Zhang Agou's jiaozi is exquisite in materials and fine in processing. The fillings are sesame, osmanthus, shrimp, ham, fresh meat, bacon, egg yolk and crab meat. Sweet-scented osmanthus dumplings are unique and have not been scooped with a spoon. The fragrance of sweet-scented osmanthus is intoxicating. Northerners like jiaozi with lard stuffing. This jiaozi is made of lard, sugar and sesame. After cooking, the skin is smooth and delicate, and the filling is mellow and delicious, which is suitable for the taste of northerners. Eat this kind of jiaozi, and the locals will persuade you to buy a bigger one. This is not only for the sake of cost-effectiveness, but because after jiaozi is cooked, all the stuffing in it will melt. If you pick a small one and bite it, you will get burned if you are not careful. If jiaozi is very big, you can't swallow it all at once. You can only bite them and taste them slowly to avoid being burned.