Sweetheart cake

01 / О БЛЮДЕ

Что это за блюдо

Исходное описание на английском языке. Русский перевод ещё не добавлен.

Lao po bing, also known as wife cake or sweetheart cake, is a thin, disc-shaped pastry originating from Guangdong province in southern China and widely produced throughout Hong Kong. Accounts trace its development to the Qing Dynasty in the city of Chaozhou, where local bakers created a flattened pastry filled with winter melon paste, which subsequently spread along southern trade routes to Guangzhou and later Hong Kong. There are many legends about its origins. One of the most popular ones is about a poor couple lived in imperial China when the husband's father fell gravely ill. To pay for his expensive medical treatments, the wife sacrificed herself by selling herself as a servant. Devastated, her husband created a delicious winter melon pastry and sold it on the streets to save up money. The cakes were so popular that he earned enough to pay off her debt, buy her back, and reunite with his wife—leading people to name the pastry in honor of the "wife" who inspired it. Preparation involves wrapping a dense, sweet paste composed of cooked winter melon, glutinous rice flour, sugar, white sesame seeds, and lard or vegetable oil inside a dual-dough casing made of a water-based dough layered with a short, oil-based dough. The assembled pastry is flattened into a disc, slashed on top to vent steam during baking, brushed with egg wash to achieve a golden finish, and baked at 180°C to 200°C until the exterior expands into paper-thin, flaky layers while the interior maintains a cohesive, chewy texture. It is served warm or at room temperature in bakeries, dim sum tea houses, and private homes across Chinese-speaking regions and global diaspora communities, held by hand and eaten as a snack or dessert accompanied by hot green tea, oolong tea, pu-erh tea, or Hong Kong-style milk tea.