MUZIChinese Matrix
Pastries · FFET10262
Osmanthus cake is a soft steamed cake of rice flour, sugar syrup and osmanthus flowers, tied by tales to Xindu in Chengdu.
A plain white porcelain plate holds pieces of soft white steamed rice cake, their surfaces scattered with tiny golden dried osmanthus flowers and black sesame seeds, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the plate.
Cakes and pastries of every kind, baked, steamed or fried.
Osmanthus cake is a soft, sweet steamed cake made from rice flour, sugar syrup and osmanthus flowers, a specialty of Xindu in Chengdu and a common street snack in Taiwan. It is said to date from the Ming dynasty, with its exact origin unclear; the accounts need further citations and no dated text was found, so the Ming origin remains unsettled. Stories about the scholar Yang Shen and the merchant Liu Jixiang in the Xindu area are folk tales.
Osmanthus cake is a soft, sweet steamed cake of rice flour, sugar syrup and osmanthus flowers. Ingredients can include glutinous rice flour, honey, osmanthus and rock sugar; of the two recipes, one uses ordinary rice flour mixed with glutinous rice flour and dried osmanthus, and the other uses glutinous rice flour alone with osmanthus syrup and dried osmanthus.1,4,5
Osmanthus cake is said to date from the Ming dynasty, with its exact origin unclear; the tale places the peddler Liu Jixiang at the end of the Ming. The accounts need further citations and no dated text was found, so the Ming origin remains unsettled.1,2
Osmanthus cake is a specialty of Xindu in Chengdu, where the tale is also set, and a common street snack in Taiwan.1,2
Rice flour (some recipes mix in glutinous rice flour) is combined with sugar or syrup and osmanthus, shaped and steamed. The two recipes give different steaming times: one steams small cakes for about 15 to 20 minutes and a large cake for 25 to 30, while the other uses a pourable batter and steams it for 1 hour.4,5
Folk tales connect it to the osmanthus tree, which blooms in autumn. The cake is eaten at Mid-Autumn.1,2,3
Osmanthus cake is a traditional pastry and a common street snack in Taiwan. These accounts still need further citations.1,2
Legend has it that the scholar Yang Shen dreamed of the Moon Palace, broke a branch from its great osmanthus tree, brought it back and planted it in his garden.
Told in: A folk tale of the Xindu area, retold in English Wikipedia and in a 2020 student blog. Chinese Wikipedia garbles the plant in this story, so it is not used here, and no dated text recording the story was found.
Legend has it that the merchant Liu Jixiang gathered the flowers that fell from Yang Shen's osmanthus tree, preserved them in sugar, mixed them into rice flour and steamed the mixture, and so the osmanthus cake came to be.
Told in: A folk tale of Xindu, retold in Chinese and English Wikipedia, which place the peddler Liu Jixiang at the end of the Ming, and in a 2020 student blog. No dated text recording the story was found.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is the simpler way I make osmanthus cake at home: rice flour is rubbed into a loose damp crumb, pressed into an oiled dish and steamed. The amounts follow a recipe blog with a named author, whose cake uses rice flour mixed with glutinous rice flour and dried osmanthus, with an optional black sesame filling. The other recipe comes from a recipe source that names no individual author; it uses glutinous rice flour alone with osmanthus syrup and steams for an hour, so it is a different method, and I describe its method only in the tips. The steaming time is my own choice.
Allergens: sesame
