Source: People's Daily - Anhui Channel Original draft
The Spring Festival is approaching, and the taste of the New Year is getting stronger. In eastern Anhui, at this time of year, the local snack bar will make a pastry, which is "shaped like a peony, white like winter snow", which is crunchy and tender to eat, known locally as "manna cake", and is also a special pastry full of New Year's flavor.
During this time, this Yuhua food store on the old street of Tianchang Ximen was in hot business. "Nectar" is sold fresh every day, late, and you have to make an appointment until the next day to buy it. Zhang Chungen, the person in charge of the food store, told the author: "Usually, it is good, as soon as the Spring Festival comes, it begins to be busy, and at most it can sell more than 500 boxes of cakes a day. ”
Manna cake in deep frying. Photo by Liu Zhihao
Qian Xiaoqiang, a citizen who was buying cakes, said: "I am used to buying a little at this time of the Spring Festival. Classmates, comrades-in-arms, and friends outside will also let us send a little, which is the old taste in everyone's memory. ”
Tianchang City Old Ximen Yuhua Food Store is a local long-established snack bar, the head of the food store Zhang Chungen and his wife have been making nectar cakes for more than 30 years, and his family's nectar cakes have become an indispensable delicacy for the New Year's Festival.
The fried nectar is completing the final step – sprinkling the flour. Photo by Liu Zhihao
The finished manna cake looks small, but the production process is very complicated. After completing these basic processes, the flour is mixed with oil and sugar and water, rolled into a puff pastry as thin as a sheet of paper, and then folded in nine layers to form the shape of a flower. Then, put the lard in the pot, wait until the oil temperature is suitable, put in the frying, only to see the puff pastry layers blooming, like the hibiscus out of the water, blooming peonies. After the pan is slightly cooled, the "frost powder" made of glutinous rice flour and white cotton sugar is evenly spread on the top with a flour sieve, and finally decorated with green plum red silk, and the manna cake is made.
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The production process is more cumbersome, the key two steps, a stacked flower, an oil temperature, the oil temperature is high, the oil temperature is low. Every step must be done well, so that the nectar cake is delicious and looks good, looking like a peony flower. Zhang Chungen, the person in charge of the food store, introduced the production process to the author while making cakes.
The nectar cake that is finally presented after layers of processes. Photo by Gan Mingyue
In recent years, in order to protect and inherit traditional handicrafts, the art of making nectar cakes has been included in the provincial intangible cultural heritage of Anhui Province. Freshly baked nectar cakes, crisp and crisp and tender in one bite, live up to the name of "manna". (Liu Qingqing, Xu Xiaofeng, Liu Zhihao)