The layers of crispy, sweet and waxy cakes have a touching love story
The crispy and soft wife cake is a very well-known shortbread in Chinese cake shops. Everyone knows that there is a beautiful love story behind wife cake, but few people know that it is a Teochew dim sum. Chaozhou wife cake is a well-known snack at home and abroad. It is the specialty dessert of Guangzhou's "Lianxiang" teahouse. It is also called "winter velvet cake". It is filled with hot rotten winter melon, sugar and flour, and is wrapped in a shortbread skin. , coated with a layer of egg liquid on the surface and then baked. It is simple and delicious and very popular among the public.
When talking about the origin of wife cake, we have to start from the late Qing Dynasty. At that time, the "Lianxiang" restaurant hired a dim sum chef from Chaozhou. Since Guangzhou was far away from Chaozhou, it was not easy for the dim sum chef to return to his hometown. One year, he wanted to go back to his hometown to visit relatives. He wanted to say that he had to bring some gifts when he returned from a big city. , so I bought some famous Guangzhou dim sum for the people in my hometown to enjoy.
Unexpectedly, after returning home, my wife said after eating: "Your "Lianxiang" teahouse is a famous old restaurant in Guangzhou. The dim sum you make is mediocre, not as good as my fried winter melon wedges." Let’s eat!” The pastry chef was very unhappy after hearing this and asked his wife to make some winter melon wedges to try. I saw my wife boiling the winter melon until it was pulpy, adding some sugar and flour, and when it was half dry and half wet, she took it out and wrapped it in dough, and fried it into golden and crispy winter melon corners. I admire it from the bottom of my heart. When I returned to Guangzhou, I especially asked my wife to make a big bag and take it back to my colleagues to taste.
Those chefs who have seen many kinds of dim sum did not take winter melon wedges seriously at first, but they had to taste them out of politeness. Unexpectedly, after eating them, they even said they were good and even the boss ate them. After that, I thought it was a famous pastry specially bought by a Chaozhou master, and asked what the name was. The Chaozhou master couldn’t answer for a while, so he explained the reason. Then someone suggested that in this case, let’s just call it Chaozhou. Wifey cake!
Later, this kind of dim sum with simple ingredients and easy to make became the signature dim sum of the "Lian Xiang" teahouse. After the dim sum master improved it, the ingredients were more finely made and made into a festive round shape. , changed from frying to baking, and became crispy, fragrant and soft wife cake. Although the teahouse owner found it tacky and changed the name to "Wong Rong Cake", however, everyone still likes to use the interesting name of wife cake. There is another story about the origin of wife cake. In the past, there was a wife who voluntarily sold herself into slavery because her father-in-law was sick and her family had no money to treat her father-in-law. In order to redeem her, the husband who loved his wife worked hard to develop a delicious cake. He bought the bread and redeemed his wife with the money from selling the bread. Therefore, later people called this kind of bread wife’s cake.