"Come and buy Dafang cake." Yesterday morning, in Guixiang Village, a century-old shop in the east of the Humble Administrator's Garden, Yang Laobo bought 4 baskets of 48 seasonal large square cakes, and he said that every year before the Qingming Dynasty, he had to purchase them, in addition to eating themselves, and then sending some to relatives to taste. According to Xue Cen, the inheritor of suzhou intangible cultural heritage dafang cake making technology, since the listing of dafang cake, the daily sales have risen to more than 600 pieces.
Affected by the epidemic, the market period of Dafang Cake this year has been postponed, and sales will start from March 20. "Many old Suzhou have long asked when they can eat Dafang Cake this year." Xue Cen said that the sauce meat, green dumplings and large square cakes listed before the Qingming Dynasty are the "red, green and white" representative foods that many Suzhou people must eat in the Qingming Dynasty. There is also a legend of Dafang Cake, after Fang Qing and Chen Cui'e in the "Pearl Tower" got married, one day the chef made several pieces of white as jade square cake, because "cake" and "high" homophony, meaning "generation higher than generation", Fang Qing as a gift to relatives and friends, since then has become Suzhou people's spring seasonal products.
To make a piece of Su-style large square cake, the time is up to 2 hours, and it takes many processes such as mixing flour, opening the chamber, filling the filling, opening the noodles, and patting the flower board. The production of Dafang cake is all based on the master's "hard work", and the 40-year-old Xue Cenzi inherited his father's business and after 12 years of tempering, he became the fourth generation of intangible cultural heritage skills. He said that according to the traditional recipe, Dafang Cake should use the rice noodles that were rolled on the same day, and at 4 a.m. every day, the masters will ratio high-quality japonica rice and glutinous rice, and then clean, soak, roll flour and other processes to configure the required rice noodles. From March 20th, as Dafang Cake resumes on the market, the cake maker starts making it ready to sell at 7:00 a.m.
A standard square cake, the shape is square, length and width are 7 cm, height is 3 cm, the weight is about 140 grams, and the thin white skin reveals red, green, black, yellow and other "five-color fillings". "There are 6 varieties of Su-style dafang cake, including rose, mint, sesame, hundred fruits, bean paste, and fresh meat, and each cake filling should account for half." According to the traditional process, the master mixing powder should be sieved twice with a special coarse sieve and a fine sieve to make the rice flour particles more uniform. After "opening the chamber", the rice noodles are sifted into the wooden steaming grid, the whole plate of rice noodles is scraped flat with a grid ruler, and the filling is added after opening into 16 cake molds, and then a thin layer of flour is sprinkled, and then the pattern is made, and then the finished product is cut out with a grid ruler, and then steamed in the steaming box for about 20 minutes.
"Every year, Suzhou people eat 300,000 pieces of dafang cake." Xue Cen said that Dafang cake is characterized by eating sweet and fat glutinous pine, according to the suzhou old law head eating method, Dafang cake is generally listed before the Qingming Dynasty, and it will fall on the market in mid-May. In recent years, as the appetite of Suzhou people eating Dafang cake has become larger and larger, the listing period has been continuously extended. Although the listing was late this year, the public's enthusiasm for tasting has not decreased, and the daily sales volume in these two days has soared more than 2 times compared with the time when it was first listed.
From the taste point of view, Suzhou people prefer fresh meat, roses, mint, and fruit filling, and foreigners prefer sesame seeds and bean paste filling dafang cake.
With the approaching of the Qingming Dynasty, the sales of seasonal cakes such as Dafang Cake and Green Dumplings have increased significantly. Su-style traditional lard bean paste green dough, each 70 grams sold for 2 yuan, these two days sold more than 600 a day. According to reports, in order to facilitate the public to purchase seasonal cake balls, the Guixiang Village Store Department at the east end of the Humble Administrator's Garden starts to supply at 7:30 every morning, and customers with special needs can also book every other day. Guanqian Street Caizhi Zhai Store Department from last Friday for the first time to adopt a closed transparent sales model, in addition to the big square cake, the listing of more than 20 varieties of Su-style classic, seasonal cakes, new salted lard cakes, lawn cakes, honey cakes, Shou Tuan Shou cakes, etc., every day at 9 a.m. to sell. (Reporter Xiao Yuan)
![The New Year is approaching, and the traditional food of "square cake" has come to tempt everyone again[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)