Text: Wu Jianchang
The kiln gallery, known as the "hometown of a thousand kilns", is famous for its abundant production of green bricks and black tiles and Beijing bricks. However, the kiln gallery also has a "character cloud cake" that is famous in the "Jiahu Point", so it is also known as the hometown of "character cloud cake". The "Character Cloud Cake" of the kiln gallery was made exclusively by the kiln gallery "Huang Yongchang Tea Shop" in the 1920s. In 1941, the "Huang Yongchang Tea Restaurant" was closed, and since then, the "Character Cloud Cake" has disappeared. It was not until around 2014 that the "character cloud cake" of the kiln gallery was revived by the painstaking research and experiment of the kiln gallery food pastry Master Xu and reappeared in front of consumers.
Mr. Wu Rongting, a jiaxing painter and famous poet, described this pastry in his book "Ten Years of Great Traces": "I am over ten years old, and my favorite is 'Character Cloud Cake', which I still remember to this day. In the Jiashan dry kiln place, there is a certain clan that can make 'character cloud cake', this cake is as large as three inches horizontal and two inches longitudinal, and on the snow-white cake piece, there are five (color) characters, like woodcut overprints on old books, very simple. The eyebrows are exposed and the production is very beautiful. ”
My wife's grandmother's family lived in the kiln gallery and also made a living from the kiln industry. According to my wife's fifth uncle (I am also called fifth uncle with my wife), "Character Cloud Cake" has been famous in Jiaxing since the 1920s, and it is a well-known pastry in dry kiln town, which sells well all over Jiaxing. In 1920, pastry chef Huang Yongji dequenced the ancestral secret recipe and opened the "Huang Yongchang Tea Shop" in the dry kiln to exclusively produce "Character Cloud Cake". The ingredients and production methods of the character cloud cake are very exquisite, a piece of thin as paper cloud cake, or with sugar melon embedded in the words "a hundred years of good union", "Fu Shou Double Complete" and other words, or with honey juice to make colored powdered sugar, kneaded into a variety of character images, often used by the township as a wedding gift for dating, marriage, birthday, send "pleased" "character cloud cake" to express praise.
Unfortunately, in 1941, during the period of Japanese and puppet rule, Huang Yongchang Tea Shop closed down, because there was no successor, and the "character cloud cake" and production skills were lost.
"Character cloud cake is not something that ordinary people can eat." The fifth uncle took a sip of green tea and continued.
Nowadays, if you go to ask the elderly over the age of 80, he will definitely shake his head and tell you that he has only heard of it, but has not seen it. If you run to ask people over the age of 90, most of them will also shake their heads and tell you that they have not eaten.
This is the past life of the kiln gallery "Character Cloud Cake", which once had a glorious time.
Chef Xu, a pastry maker who is now over the age of ancient, has been a dim sum chef for three generations. He has been dealing with "flour frosting" since he was a child and grew up in "cake and cake bearers".
In the early 1980s, Master Xu, who was still an apprentice in Jiaxing Food Factory at the time, listened to the teachers talk about how the "Character Cloud Cake" was famous in those years; how glamorous and beautiful it was that the famous people in Jiangnan carried the "Character Cloud Cake" used to entertain guests in return. But "I have heard its name for a long time, but I have not seen its cake", which has planted a seed in the heart of the young Master Xu.
In 2013, by chance, Master Xu saw the record of the "Character Cloud Cake" in the "Local History", so the seed of reviving the "Character Cloud Cake" that was planted that year began to sprout in his heart. With decades of experience in pastry making, with the unique conditions of opening a food pastry shop at home, Master Xu repeatedly looked up information, repeatedly tested the ingredients, and finally determined the basic ingredients of the character cloud cake: rice flour, powdered sugar, sesame powder and walnuts. Then there is the proportion of ingredients, mold shape, baking time... About the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2015, after using thousands of pounds of flour and trying to make thousands of cloud cakes, this year's Mid-Autumn Festival, Master Xu finally let this traditional name that has been lost for nearly a hundred years re-emerge.
Master Xu called it "Zhuangyuan Cloud Slice Cake". On a small piece of cloud cake, there is a fat and bulging little man, wearing a large hat made of sesame seeds, wearing a walnut coat, large round eyes, and a bright smile. The characters are chubby, fleshy and lifelike.
On this Wednesday afternoon, to supplement the previous topic of "intangible cultural heritage and rural nostalgia", I came to Master Xu's "Tianle Food" pastry shop in the kiln corridor on Yaoxin Road, because the "character cloud cake" revived by Master Xu has become a county-level intangible cultural heritage. I met Master Xu's daughter in the shop, and it turned out that Master Xu's daughter was actually a student of mine more than 20 years ago, because I had served as a school leader at Yaolang Middle School more than 20 years ago. So I explained what I meant.
Master Xu's daughter told me about the making technique of "Character Cloud Cake".
"Jiahu fine point", expensive in exquisite. Compared with ordinary pastries that can be made in ten minutes, the production process of character cloud cake is extremely complicated, and it takes at least two hours. It is the most complex and important step of the cake powder into the mold, and if you are not careful, you will fall short. When entering the mold, glutinous rice flour, walnuts, sesame powder and other materials are placed into the iron mold according to different placements, this proportion determines the success or failure of the "character" shape of the cloud cake. When sprinkling powder, sprinkle the powder layer by layer on the corresponding position. Among them, the weight, the strength, the proportion, if you don't master it well, you can't make the shape of the character, either the hat is crooked, or the eyes are oblique.
"This pastry is exquisite here." Master Xu's daughter pointed to the sample on display. I saw a character cloud cake about 30 centimeters long, and the snow-white cloud cake was embedded with a pink nine-pin sesame official, wearing a black black gauze hat, a wide brim, and a round and rolling belly, which came alive.
Because of the particularity of its production process, it can only be pre-booked at present, and it cannot be made in batches like ordinary pastries. So I didn't see the specific production process of "Character Cloud Cake" this time. But from the narration of Master Xu's daughter, I can feel the so-called "craftsman spirit", although it is only the revival of the small cloud cake making process; I feel the ordinary pastry chef's feelings for inheriting excellent traditional culture.
May this "character cloud cake" be able to enter the daily mode of production as soon as possible and meet the consumption needs of the villagers, and may this piece of white paper be embedded with the words "hundred years of good union" and "fu shou double complete" and other words "character cloud cake", which can be re-entered as a festive gift for dating, marriage and birthday carried by the township at an early date.
I think so, and I will.
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