Longchuan Beef Tendon Cake

Longchuan Beef Tendon Cake

　　Beef Tendon Cake originates from Longchuan, Guangdong.

　　Longchuan Beef Tendon Cake is made by blending authentic high-quality Longchuan glutinous rice flour with several types of sugar. Its production involves many steps and requires exquisite craftsmanship. From grinding the flour to applying the sugar and then steaming the cake, the process takes more than twice as long as that for ordinary cakes.

　　Legend has it that in the past, a strange incident occurred in the mountainous area of Longchuan County; a man who enjoyed performing magic tricks switched to selling pastries. To attract customers, he drove a large water buffalo through the streets. With a small cloth bag tied around his waist, he walked along the street shouting “Beef Tendon Cake” for sale. Many curious people gathered around to see what exactly Beef Tendon Cake was. When someone asked to buy it, he would pull out a long “beef tendon” from under the buffalo’s ribs with his other hand and hand it over to the customer. People were dumbfounded by this amazing trick. Those who bought the Beef Tendon Cake weren’t sure whether it was real or fake, so they broke off pieces to share with others. Everyone who tried it couldn’t help but praise its delicious taste—fragrant, sweet, soft yet not sticky, tender yet not crispy—with a truly unique flavor. From then on, Beef Tendon Cake became famous in Longchuan County. The magician no longer needed to drive the buffalo through the streets to sell it but instead opened a dedicated Beef Tendon Cake shop in town, and his business flourished. In reality, Longchuan Beef Tendon Cake isn’t the result of magic tricks—the “beef tendon” the magician pulled from the buffalo was merely a sales gimmick.

　　“Longchuan Beef Tendon Cake” is the flagship product registered under the trademark of Longchuan County Biscuit and Confectionery Factory in Guangdong Province. It is made using high-quality glutinous rice, white sugar, maltose, dried tangerine peel sugar, peanut oil, and other ingredients, following traditional techniques while incorporating improved technology. The cake is resilient and soft, with a translucent color, elastic texture, and prominent traditional flavor. It is sweet and delicious, making it a premium tourist product of Longchuan. The product is well-known both domestically and internationally, exported as far as Southeast Asia, and is honored as a “product of the Dong River region.” It has won the title of Guangdong Province Quality Product multiple times.

　　“Longchuan Beef Tendon Cake” is a relic of traditional folk food culture with a history of over 300 years. Around 1940, food lovers from nearby Meizhou, Xingning, Wuhua, and other regions, as well as guests from other parts of China, overseas Chinese, and compatriots from Hong Kong and Macau, regarded Beef Tendon Cake as a premium gift. They would purchase “Laolong Chen Shunxing Beef Tendon Cake” in Old Long (Longchuan) to bring to Southeast Asia or back to their hometowns to give to relatives and friends.

　　After the liberation, especially following the reform and opening-up, in order to preserve the traditional characteristics and reputation of the product and meet consumer market demand, the production process evolved from manual operation to semi-mechanized operation. Currently, there is a factory building covering 2,680 square meters, equipped with one rice roasting machine, five flour milling machines, three mixers, four steam cabinets, one 0.5-ton boiler set, one cooling equipment unit, and one packaging machine, with an investment of over 1 million yuan. The annual output is 35 tons, and the annual output value is 900,000 yuan.