Beijing Golden Cake

Beijing Golden Cake

　　Golden Cake is actually hawthorn cake. The making of Golden Cake began in the mid-Qing Dynasty and is a traditional Beijing delicacy. Empress Dowager Cixi was particularly fond of it and would send people out of the palace to buy hawthorn cake. After trying the hawthorn cake from Taixing Hao, she found it quite tasty, but thought the name "hawthorn cake" was inelegant, so she bestowed upon it the name Golden Cake. At that time, there were two most famous Golden Cake shops in Beijing: Taixing Hao and Fu Chuan Zhai, each with their own distinct methods and characteristics. Taixing Hao's Golden Cake was made with alum, giving it a rouge-like color, bright and translucent, but it generally wouldn’t last through the dog days of summer; Fu Chuan Zhai’s Golden Cake, made using a secret family recipe without alum, had a golden hue and could be enjoyed well past the dog days. Although the owners of both Golden Cake shops had the surname Zhang, people only referred to Taixing Hao as “Golden Cake Zhang.” It wasn’t that Fu Chuan Zhai’s Golden Cake was inferior to Taixing Hao’s, but rather that Taixing Hao benefited from the favor of the “Old Buddha.” The Golden Cake produced by Taixing Golden Cake Shop was as renowned as Xinyuanzhai’s plum juice and Tongyizhai’s pear paste. “Taixing Golden Cake Shop” was turned into a joint public-private enterprise in 1956 and was managed by the old owner Zhang Yuantai’s nephew, Zhang Zhongheng. After Zhang Zhongheng passed away in 1964, Taixing Golden Cake Shop merged into the Luomashi Qianmen Food Factory, which was later renamed Xuanwu Food Factory.

There are many varieties of Golden Cake: Eight-Treasure Golden Cake, Osmanthus Honey Cake, Improved Flower Cake, and Crystal Golden Cake, among others, each with distinct flavors and unique features. Eight-Treasure Golden Cake is made by adding a certain amount of preserved fruits and fruit pulp to the Golden Cake, resulting in an attractive appearance and a distinctive taste. Osmanthus Honey Cake is made by adding a small amount of fresh osmanthus to the Golden Cake, giving it a fragrant taste that is mainly sweet, not very sour. Improved Flower Cake is shaped using molds into various forms, commonly featuring legendary figures such as the Eight Immortals, the Old God of Longevity, the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie, and Tang Seng, resembling dough figurines with lifelike detail. Crystal Golden Cake is especially unique, typically made into slices about 1 centimeter thick with high transparency—you can clearly see the people and objects on the other side when holding it in your hand.