Puff Pastry Cake

Puff Pastry Cake

　　 Puff Pastry Cake is a renowned traditional Han Chinese snack from Sanyuan County in Shaanxi Province, with origins tracing back to the Tang Dynasty’s “Wind-Dispersing” oil pancake, a famous dish from Wei Juyuan’s Banquet of Promotion. The filling is made by mixing white sugar, osmanthus, rose, walnut kernels, and cooked flour; the dough is made from strong flour scalded with boiling water and lard. The Puff Pastry Cake from Xi’an Restaurant and May 1st Restaurant has made it onto the “Golden List of China’s Famous Snacks.”

　　Puff Pastry Cake is made by wrapping a filling of osmanthus and white sugar in scalded dough, then deep-frying it. It gets its name from the raised, fluffy bubbles that appear on the surface of the cake. Legend has it that Puff Pastry Cake was originally a palace dessert. During the An-Shi Rebellion, an imperial chef skilled in making this cake fled to Sanyuan County, north of present-day Xi’an. To make a living, he started selling Puff Pastry Cakes, and the craft was thus passed down to the public, becoming a beloved delicacy in the Sanyuan area through generations. During the Qing Dynasty, some Sanyuan locals who mastered the art of making these cakes moved to Xi’an to produce and sell them, spreading the fame of Puff Pastry Cake far and wide.

　　Snack Features: The color is milky white, and the crust is fluffy, as if woven from gauze or pinched from cicada wings.

　　I. Preparation Method

　　Ingredients: 1000g flour, 250g cooked pork, 350g white sugar, appropriate amounts of osmanthus jam, rose jam, walnut kernels, and cooked flour.

　　1. Boil water in a pot, add lard, pour the flour into the pot, and stir the oil and flour over low heat until a cooked dough forms. Remove from heat and place on a work surface to cool. Then knead repeatedly with cold water to form a soft dough—this is the scalded dough.

　　2. Make the osmanthus white sugar filling from white granulated sugar, osmanthus jam, walnut kernels, cooked flour, and other ingredients.

　　3. Divide the scalded dough into pieces, pat them into flat rounds, stuff with the osmanthus white sugar filling, and shape into cake blanks.

　　4. After frying, a layer of bubbles forms on the surface of the cake—thin as cicada wings and white as frost. They bloom like flowers, seemingly vanishing in the wind, melting in the mouth, soft and moist, fragrant and richly flavored.

　　II. Preparation Requirements:

　　Puff Pastry Cake is made with ingredients such as scalded dough, lard, osmanthus, and a white sugar filling, using a unique and refined preparation method. The cake is milky white in color with a fluffy crust, resembling fabric woven from gauze or crafted from cicada wings—an extraordinary feat of culinary artistry. Its popularity stems largely from its distinctive preparation technique.

　　Normally, fried dough sticks and pancakes are fluffy and airy mainly due to the proper ratio of alum and baking soda to flour, which produces carbon dioxide gas that expands when placed in hot oil. However, Puff Pastry Cake uses neither alum nor baking soda, relying only on lard and scalded dough to achieve the same fluffy rise. This requires the pastry chef to possess exceptional skill and experience—the proportions of lard, water, and flour must be precisely balanced, and strict control over oil temperature is essential. When the cake is placed in oil at the right temperature, internal steam forms rapidly, causing gases to expand quickly while proteins denature and starch gelatinizes and carbonizes. Bubbles gradually form and stabilize in the high-temperature environment, ensuring the cake retains its structure upon removal from the oil.

　　III. Precautions

　　1. The cake should be deep-fried and served at the table as quickly as possible before eating. Once cooled, the beautiful, lace-like bubbles will deflate, and the sugar filling will harden, significantly affecting the texture and taste.

　　2. When eating Puff Pastry Cake, do not be hasty. Those who bite in too quickly and swallow without caution may burn the front of their mouths. The melted sugar filling may spill down the arm to the elbow. Trying to lick it off with an upturned elbow may cause the remaining filling in the hand to drip down and scald the lower back.