Heqing Rice Cake

Heqing Rice Cake

　　Heqing Rice Cake, with its appealing color, aroma, and taste, is a traditional food used by locals to entertain guests or honor ancestors and deities during festivals, weddings, funerals, and other important occasions.

Heqing Rice Cake is meticulously made and comes in two main types: dry cake and water cake. To make dry cake, first soak premium white rice until soft, then grind it into powder. Next, mix the powder with mint, orange peel juice, and brown sugar, and grind it finely, then sift it through a fine sieve into a steamer basket. Carefully slice it into small pieces using a thin knife—each piece about 2 inches wide, 1.5 inches high, and 0.5 inches thick—and steam them over high heat. Water cake is made from high-gluten flour with an additional 1% glutinous rice flour, and is steamed in the same way as dry cake, but without adding sugar. After steaming, sprinkle brown sugar on top, let it melt, and then add sesame seeds or perilla seeds. Among dry cakes, festive dry cake is considered the finest, and it comes in two varieties: layered cake and colored cake. Layered cake is diamond-shaped, slightly thicker and larger than regular dry cake, with a filling of mixed layers including brown sugar, mint, orange peel, date paste, and longan. Colored cake is square-shaped, featuring a red central line and a red-topped surface, creating a striking red-and-white contrast with a delicate and attractive appearance. When used to serve guests, rice cakes are often topped with brown sugar or rose sugar. For ancestral worship or Buddhist offerings, fresh flowers are inserted on the surface of the cake. During the Qingming Festival each year, when green broad beans come into season, bean flour is mixed into the rice dough, giving the cake a greenish-yellow hue and enhanced flavor. This green bean rice cake is often used for tomb-sweeping in the mountains or for entertaining distinguished guests.