I remember when I was a child, my favorite was to catch the market, also known as the rush to the market, when I was a child, I grew up in the town, and there was a market every five days of the lunar calendar, when there would be nearby vendors selling all kinds of items, including food, clothing, and housing. As a child, my attention is on eating, and the market is like the current shopping mall, with a variety of foods, preserves, dried fruits, pastries, fruits, sweets and so on. Children always like to eat snacks, and the family is also, they are only allowed to use cloud cake as a snack for children, and ice cream cake is one of the healthiest snacks in their eyes.
Cloud cake, also known as ice cream cake, is a kind of pastry, its history is very long, as early as the Qianlong period began to make, to "thin, soft, fragrant, white" famous Zhejiang, Gansu, Fujian, Anhui four provinces border. The shape of the cloud cake is rectangular, the edges and corners are neat and regular, the texture is moist and soft, like gelatin, it can be hidden for a long time, the main raw materials are glutinous rice, sugar, lard, olive kernels, sesame seeds, spices, etc., the taste is sweet and soft, its name is from the characteristics of thin slices and white color, there are step by step, seeking blessings and auspicious meanings.
It is said that when Qianlong went down to Jiangnan and passed through Huai'an, he encountered heavy snow, and at one time the poem was full of poetry, and the export became a chapter: "Snowflakes are one piece after another, two pieces of three pieces of four or five pieces, six pieces of seven pieces of eight or nine pieces..." Zhengyi was unable to continue, a large salt merchant surnamed Wang put onyx plates with thinly sliced glutinous rice cakes and sent them up, Qianlong picked it up and tasted it, only to feel light white and fine, melting in the mouth, greatly appreciated. Wang Yanshang took the opportunity to ask the emperor to give him a name, and Qianlong said casually: "This cake is white and thin, just call it ice cream cake." Who knows, but the word "snow" was mistakenly written as the word "cloud", so the mistake was wrong, and it was named Cloud Cake. Once the cloud cake has been asked by the imperial title, it is worth a hundred times and has since become a good gift. In the old days, whenever someone was examined, promoted, or traveled far, relatives and friends would give them a cloud cake, which means "step cake (high) ascension".
Now with the improvement of people's living standards, the types of snacks have become more and more abundant, and the concept of parents has also changed. The chance of seeing the cloud cake in ordinary life has become smaller, and its heat seems to have faded. One side of the long and thick cloud cake in hand, sitting on a chair and slowly peeling and eating, can peel off dozens of pieces at most, as thin as a book page. How long have you not eaten cloud cake?