Fuping Empress Cake has a brown and crispy outer skin, a clear layer of inner matter, soft and delicious, and the oil is not greasy, which has a history of more than 2,000 years and was included in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Shaanxi Province in 2010.
>> origin
Originated from the court tribute of the early Han Dynasty
Fuping Empress Cake, with a long history, originated from the Western Han Dynasty during the Reign of Emperor Wen. Legend has it that when Emperor Liu Heng of han was swaddling, his mother Empress Bo did not have enough milk. Emperor Wen was often so hungry that he cried, and Empress Bo was impatient. One day, Empress Bo ran into the imperial kitchen to find something to give Emperor Wen something to eat. When she saw the snow white and moist lard on the kitchen board, she felt that it was a good thing to nourish the body. So, she mixed the pork plate oil into the steamed bun noodles, rolled out the noodles two or three inches long with a rolling pin, and grilled them over the fire. Liu Heng tasted, crisp, cotton, soft, the taste is particularly good, very fond of eating. This food not only solved Empress Bo's urgent needs, but also nourished a generation of kings. This thing was later called fire song, which is the predecessor of the queen cake,
When Empress Lü came to power, Empress Bo stayed away from the imperial family and often took her son Liu Heng to Huaide County (present-day Huaiyang City, Huazhu Township, Fuping County) in Gyeonggi To relax. According to the "Chronicle of Fuping County", there is a garden of Empress Bo here. When the local people learned that Liu Heng was raised by Huoqu, they imitated it for their children, and it was indeed delicious and stomach-healthy. To this day, locals still burn steamed Later, some curious people, according to the ingredients of the fire song, baked into cakes, and their shape, color, taste and nutrients were even more unique, which aroused the great interest of Empress Bo. Therefore, this kind of cake later became a royal product.
In order to commemorate Empress Bo, the local people built three temples south of Huaiyang City from west to east, and called this kind of cake empress dowager cake.
>> genealogy
Modern inheritance is mostly related to Wang Jingzhou
Speaking of the master of making empress dowager cake, we must mention Wang Jingzhou (who died in the early 90s of the last century), known as the King of Jingzhou, who is the only descendant of modern empress dowager cake. Wang Jingzhou's ancestral home is Fufeng County, but no one knows when their family moved to Fuping. It is said that Wang Jingzhou's grandfather passed on the skill of making empress cakes to his father, who in turn passed it on to him. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Wang Jingzhou's father opened a façade in Xi'an's Descending Zi Lane (near the north of the present-day Kaiyuan Shopping Mall) to sell Fuping Wangjia baked cakes (that is, Empress Dowager cakes). At that time, the name of the queen cake had not yet been spread).
In the 1930s, there was a grocery store in the north lane northwest of Nanguan Cross in Fuping, and the treasurer was called Meng Xichen. Wang Jingzhou set up a cake stall at the entrance of the store. Meng Zhenhan, the son of the treasurer, learned the skill of making empress cakes. After the founding of New China, Meng Zhenhan opened the Empress Dowager Cake Stall and hung a signboard of Wang Jingzhou. Meng Zhenhan became another lineage of empress dowager cakes.
In 1962, the Fuping County Catering Service Company asked the King of Jingzhou to bring apprentices to the first canteen of the state-run Nanguan, and Zhang Zhenqiang, a Lantian man, was his only true disciple. Later, the service building opened, and chef Wang of Jingzhou was invited to make empress cake to entertain foreign guests, and the noodle master Li Mingxiong tu learned the art and mastered the skills of empress dowager cake. He formed a lineage again.
So far, Meng Huaihai, the third generation of the Meng Zhenhan lineage, still adheres to the traditional oven roasting technique, and its queen cake remains original and unique.
At present, there are many shops in the urban area of Fuping County that bake queen cakes, and there is no obvious lineage.
>> secret
Baking the Queen's Cake is key
Fuping Empress Cake is created by working people on the basis of court food through processing innovation. The materials, processing technology and shape of the Empress Cake not only meet the needs of court consumption, but also have a strong local atmosphere and local characteristics. Crisp, crisp, soft, cotton, oily aroma is not greasy, the appearance is burnt yellow, the inner layer is clear, "full of mouth and toothless can eat" characteristics are very prominent, so it has been passed down for a long time.
Once under the guidance of Wang Jingzhou's son Wang Zhiding and the inheritor of the Empress Dowager Cake, Duan Zhangwa, the processing technology of the Empress Dowager Cake seems simple and popular, but in fact, it is very exquisite. In particular, the tweezers that make the queen cake are particularly critical. This hammer is specially made, divided into two layers, the lower chain sits on the stove with low fire requirements, rubs oil, the cake is burned in it, and the upper chain is tied to the chain, fixed to the lever, and can be moved at any time according to the color of the fire. On top of it was a red charcoal fire, which collapsed on the lower chain. Now some people will switch the chain to an electric oven, which is very different from the traditional baking method.
The three stubble noodles of the queen cake are 1-1.5 kg per serving, of which 30% are fermented. Apply a little alkali, feel the slightly hot water and noodles, soft but not sticky, and then put it up and set aside. The lard must be as thick and hard as possible, bloodless, peeled off, removed impurities. Cut into finger-sized pieces, smash them into mud with the back of a kitchen knife, add salt, and hold them into balls.
The queen cake is baked with a braised belt and cooked in twenty or thirty minutes. The face is burnt yellow, its taste is soft and oily, its shape is like a tower, the inner layer is clear, it is really fragrant.
The processing process of the queen cake is very primitive and authentic, and no food of any era and any process and innovation cannot be replaced. And this seemingly rough processing of raw raw materials so that the world has a strong sense of happiness and enjoyment, and its nutritional value has nourished a generation of kings.
>> development
Establish a base for the display and inheritance of the Queen's Cake
Duan Zhangwa said that fuping queen cake is best eaten freshly, the taste will be delicious, so that the eater has endless aftertaste. Some diners ate the queen cake in the shop, and they had to pack it up and take it away to send relatives and friends, but when they returned home, the queen cake was already cold, which seriously affected the taste of the queen cake.
Pork plate oil and flour are the main ingredients of the queen cake, so the shelf life of the queen cake is relatively short, and now although the queen cake is exported to all parts of the country through the network, it is difficult to preserve it is still the biggest factor restricting the development of the queen cake. The variety of the queen cake is single, the profit is small, the money is slow, and it is necessary to slowly settle down to learn, and many young people are unwilling to learn and engage in the production of the queen cake.
Li Ping, head of the Fuping County Intangible Cultural Heritage Center, said that at present, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Center is mainly to do a good job in the brand of Fuping Empress Cake, and encourages artists who can make Empress Cake to sell offline and online through physical stores and networks. Next year, we plan to establish a Fuping Empress Cake Display Base in Fuping County, and a heritage base for Fuping Empress Cake to better publicize, inherit and develop Fuping Empress Cake. Huashang Daily reporter Con fei photographed Li Ping
Source: China Business Network