Cloud cake, also known as ice cake, is a traditional cake delicacy in Huai'an, Jiangsu. The title of pen & fun &www.biquge.info is derived from the characteristics of thin and white color. Its characteristic nature is nourishing and soft, like clotted fat, can be stored for a long time is not hard, and it is very sophisticated in manufacturing, such as fried glutinous rice flour, which is usually stored for about half a year to remove its dryness; The choice of white sugar is also more stringent; As for the slicing request for cakes, the requirements for slicing are also very high, each cake is 22 cm long, and it is normal to cut about 140 slices.

There are many raw materials for cloud cake and the process is extremely precise. The main raw materials are glutinous rice, sugar, lard, olive kernels, sesame seeds, spices and so on. Each raw material should be selected with the highest quality. Let's talk about glutinous rice, glutinous rice should be milled to remove the rice skin and leave the rice heart.

When stir-frying, one should be cooked thoroughly, and the other should be white; The grinding powder must be continuously sifted, and the cotton is as fine as the surface; White sugar does not use grain sugar, but uses the "granulated sugar" of Tutangliao to take its small grains, loose quality, and instant solubility. All kinds of raw materials are processed separately, and then mixed and mixed well, and compacted into shape. Finally, the slicer holds a sharp square knife and cuts it into slices, as thin as a book page.

When you unseal a piece of cloud-shaped cloud-shaped cake like a small sixteen-open book, the snow-white color and fragrant smell will make you appreciate more than once. If you tear off a piece and put it in your mouth, it will melt like a snowflake and chew it quietly, and the sweetness and delicacy will make you even more intoxicated. The most famous is the cloud cake of "Wanyuanzhai" and "Xiangquanzhuang". One of their cloud cakes can be rolled into a ring, and a match can be turned into a flame.

There are various ways to make cloud cakes, and they can be made into different flavors according to their preferences, such as walnut flavor, osmanthus flavor, etc. According to the size, it is divided into large cakes and small cakes. The shape of the cloud cake is rectangular, the edges and corners are regular, the thickness of the cake is average, the color is white like snow, the feel is soft and elastic, it can be bent into an arc and cracked from time to time, the taste is sweet and soft, the entrance is melting, the cloud cake is usually packaged in red paper or red paper box.

Cloud cake is one of the offerings that the people of Chaozhou in Guangdong regard as clean and superior in the Mid-Autumn Festival. A few days before the festival, no one did not buy cloud cakes, in addition to their own use, but also gave them away. Overseas Chinese in Chaozhou scattered all over the world, on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, will always piggyback on or try to buy a few pieces of cloud cake to comfort their homesickness.

When Qianlong went down to the south of the Yangtze River, he went to the northwest of Huai'an City to Hexia Town. At the behest of a salt merchant surnamed Wang, he went to his garden. When the snow was falling outside. Qianlong admired the snow by the window, so comfortable, and poured into poetry, so he chanted the poem "Snow Scene": "One by one, three pieces, four pieces, five or six pieces, seven pieces, eight pieces, ninety pieces......" his mouth just "piece by piece" chanting, but he kept not receiving the fourth sentence, looking at the heavy snow outside the window and was anxious.

At this moment, Wang Yanshang held a plate of fine agate and offered refreshments to the emperor. Qianlong just used this time to eat refreshments to consider the following.

The two plates of the same pastry on the agate plate absorbed Qianlong, he forgot to use chopsticks, picked up two slices casually, tasted it, sweet and soft, refreshing and delicious, and praised it: "What a good point, so happy!" ”

After eating more than ten slices, he asked Wang Yanshang for the name of the pastry, and asked if there was any such pastry for sale in the market. Wang Yanshang replied truthfully: "This is an ancestral snack in the family, there is no name, and there is no place to sell it outside." Wang Yanshang took the opportunity to praise how good this pastry was, and asked the emperor to give him a good name. Qianlong granted the plea of the salt merchant Wang, wanting to give this traditional delicacy an elegant title.

He thought about it for a while, and suddenly remembered the poem that he hadn't finished chanting, and couldn't help but exclaim: "Wow! Is the color and shape of this pastry like thin snowflakes flying outside? In my opinion, I will give this cake the name 'Ice Flake Cake'! After hearing this, Wang Yanshang hurriedly kowtowed and thanked him.

Subsequently, he hurriedly brought the four treasures of the study at home and asked the emperor to inscribe them. Qianlong was so happy that he was careless and wrote "ice cake" as "cloud cake". Since then, the confectionery shop has been changed to "cloud cake".

Yunyang peach slice cake, famous throughout the country. It is made through dozens of processes. I heard that this kind of craft was first transmitted from Zhejiang. A long time ago, there was the only son of a wealthy man in Zhejiang, named Tang Cong. This person loves sugar the most, and he became toothless at the age of seventeen or eighteen, and his father donated a Yunyang Zhixian to him with money, and when he went to work, he brought Chen Shi, a sugar craftsman in the family, to Yunyang to make sweets for himself. After a long time, Chen Shi was homesick, and slowly became anxious and became ill. When Tang returned home from the end of his three-year term, he left him alone and walked away.

Near the left of the county ya, there are two apprentices of Zhaipu, Qiuguang and Qiuli, two brothers and sisters. When they saw that the old man was really unlucky, they took him home and carefully treated him. As the old man slowly recovered, he taught them the art of making confectionery. After Qiu Guangguang got the craft, he made a human-shaped cloud cake in the Song family's shop, and it was sold out immediately. Since then, the business has been prosperous, and in less than two years, the Song family has become a big boss and married the handsome daughter Xu to Qiuguang.

On the opposite side of the Zuojiazhai shop, there is a son, but because the candy business in the store is not good, he can't afford to read, so he has to give up school and work. Later, the old man Chen Shi agreed with him and got married to Miss Qiuli. Under the teaching of the elderly, the cloud cake was also made, and the cloud cake consumed by the two companies, that is, the peach cake, was sold well inside and outside the province. The two shops prepared their suits and silver taels to send the teacher back to Zhejiang to spend his twilight years in peace. The peach slice cake made by Qiuli and Qiuguang has been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years to become a specialty of Yunyang.

Stay in the cloud cake. The daughter-in-law of the family wants to come to the door to propose, and the "cloud cake" is indispensable; moving, worshipping God for safety, "cloud cake" is also indispensable; During the festival, when visiting relatives and friends, "cloud cake" is one of the preferred gifts for people. In Fengshun County, most of the people who do happy events and good deeds have a "place" for Liuhuang cloud cake. Liuhuang cloud cake is sweet and delicious, mixed with olive kernel rice cake, black and white, break off a piece and send it into the mouth, like a snowflake melting, quietly chewing, the sweet and delicate feeling is even more provocative, it has become a very famous specialty of Feng awkward a long time ago.

Cloud cake is one of the more well-known specialties of Liuhuang. Liuhuang cloud cake means good omen, and is deeply loved by people in the local area of Wuhua, Xingning, Tai Po and Chaoshan. Legend has it that during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, Liuhuang had a show to participate in the imperial examination, and fell to Sun Shan five times in a row, and in the sixth imperial examination, the wife in order to save the plate for her husband, deliberately grinded the glutinous rice into powder, added sugar and a little water, steamed into rice cakes to satisfy hunger, did not want to rush to the exam, but actually raised people in the examination. After the news spread, the villagers followed suit, thinking that the sound of "cake" was the same as "high", and eating it could rise step by step.