How To Say I Love Cake In Cantonese

Traditional Cantonese pastry

Sweetheart cake

Alternative names	Wife cake, Lo por beng, Lao po bing, 老婆餅,（Chinese proper noun (simplified)）老婆饼
Blazon	Cake
Course	Snack, dessert
Place of origin	Guangdong, China
Region or state	Cantonese-speaking areas
Main ingredients	Winter melon, almond paste, sesame, v spice powder
Cookbook: Sweetheart block Media: Sweetheart cake

Sweetheart cake

Traditional Chinese

老婆餅

Simplified Chinese

老婆饼

Literal significant

wife ("sweetheart") cake

Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	lǎopó bǐng
Yue: Cantonese
Jyutping	lou5 po4 beng2
IPA	[lo̬u pʰɔ̏ː pɛ̌ːŋ]
Southern Min
Hokkien POJ	lāu-pô-piáⁿ

A sweetheart block or married woman cake or spousal relationship pie is a traditional Cantonese cake with a thin crust of flaky pastry, and made with a filling of wintertime melon, almond paste, and sesame, and spiced with five spice pulverisation.^[i] "Wife block" is the translation of lou po beng from Cantonese, and although the significant is "married woman", the literal translation is "old lady cake", paralleling the colloquial usage of "old lady" for "wife" in American English language.

Variants [edit]

The traditional variant is from the Guangdong region, where the filling consists of candy-coated wintermelon.^[2] The candy-coated wintermelon mash is then combined with white sesame seeds and gluey rice flour.^[3] Coconut in the class of mash or desiccated shreds and almond paste, as well every bit vanilla, are too added sometimes.^[iv] The paste is encased in Cantonese-style pastry dough; the accurate season and flaky texture of the pastry is traditionally produced by using pork lard shortening^[5] then by glazing with egg wash.^[6] Due to its rising popularity in Western countries brought about by immigration, butter is sometimes substituted in place of lard,^[7] though this volition alter the taste. The level of sweetness is mild, compared to Western sweetness pastries.

Southeast Asian variations can include spices such as Chinese five spice (五香粉). Although this spice is of Chinese origin, it is not traditionally used in sweetheart cakes. Sweetheart cake may exist confused with the married man cake (老公饼 or Lao gong bing), which uses star anise in its filling.^[viii]

[edit]

There are many legends that attempt to explain the origins of the sweetheart block. One tells the tale of a couple that lived a very poor life in imperial China. They loved each other and lived in a pocket-sized hamlet. Of a sudden, a mysterious affliction spread and the husband's father became very sick. The couple spent all of their coin in guild to treat the human's male parent. The married woman sold herself as a slave in exchange for money to purchase medicine for her father-in-constabulary. One time the husband learned well-nigh what his wife did, he fabricated a cake filled with sweetened wintermelon and almond. He dedicated this pastry to his married woman whom he could never forget, and sold it on the street. His cake became so popular that he was able to earn enough money to buy his wife dorsum.^[9]

At that place is another version where the man went searching for his wife after he earned enough money to purchase her back. In his search, he had a loving cup of tea at a local teahouse, when he all of a sudden recognised the pastry they were serving with the tea. The homo and his wife were reunited at the teahouse.

Another story tells of a dim sum chef's wife creating a pastry with wintermelon paste influenced by a recipe from her mother'south family. The new pastry was constitute to taste better than the dim sums that were existence sold in teahouses, and the chef proudly told everyone information technology was made by his wife, hence it was named "Wife Block".^[10]

See besides [edit]

Chinese baker products
List of Chinese desserts
List of desserts
List of melon dishes
List of pastries
Marry girl cake
Food portal

References [edit]

^ Chinese-sweetheart-cake Archived 2012-07-03 at archive.today
^ Phil (2009). "How to brand Candied Wintertime Melon aka Tung Kua(冬瓜糖)". Retrieved eighteen December 2011.
^ "Chinese Married woman Cake Recipe". 2006.
^ "Wife Biscuit/Sweetheart Cake". 2010. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
^ "40 Hong Kong foods we can't live without". CNN International. 2010. Archived from the original on five Nov 2012. Retrieved xviii Dec 2011.
^ "Wife Biscuit/Sweetheart Cake". 2010. Retrieved eighteen December 2011.
^ "Cantonese Pastries: Husband and Wife Cake". Lifeofguangzhou.com. 2008. Retrieved eighteen December 2011.
^ "Cantonese Pastries: Husband and Wife Cake". LIfeofguangzhou.com. 2008. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
^ "Cantonese Pastries: Husband and Married woman Cake". Lifeofguangzhou.com. 2008. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
^ Jacky Yu. "Food Story". Retrieved 18 December 2011.