Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2019-10-23 Origin: Site
Peony flowers represent wealth, and besides ornamental, it can also be used to make food, such as the peony cake. The peony cake is mainly made of bean powder, and mashed with rice, steamed into cake, and then mixed with selected peas, red beans, red dates, whole milk powder, custard powder, and the filling is baked with carefully soaked peony petals.
According to legend, the inventor of peony cake was Wu Zetian. According to the Sui and Tang Dynasties Tales, there is a year of flower festival, that is, the season of Valley rain and peony blooming. She led the girls to visit the garden and admire the flowers. She watched the flowers fighting for beauty and had a sudden fantasy. The maid of the palace was ordered to pick a large number of flowers of various colors and return to the palace according to her design. She mashed the rice and steamed it into a cake, which is called "Baihua Cake", and gave the courtiers the delicious sweet snacks as gifts.
Peony cake is also known as "Tianhuang cake", because Wu Zetian and Tang Gaozong are called Tianhou and Tianhuang. In the twenty-third year of Tang Zhenguan (649), Wu Zetian was sent to Ganye Temple in Chang'an to have his hair cut. Occasionally, she used peony petals as raw materials to make vegetarian cakes. Once eaten, she had an extraordinary taste of instant sensation. When Tang Gaozong visited the temple, she sent the cake to Emperor Gaozong. Wu Zetian passed on her feelings with cakes. Not long after, she returned to the palace and became the queen.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the exchanges between China and Japan were frequent. Luoyang peony was spread to Japan. The Japanese painters painted the beautiful and dignified Chinese peony on the walls of the Shrine in Nara, which was highly respected by the Japanese people. The production of peony cake also spread from China to Japan, which has lasted for more than a thousand years. Peony cake is also popular among Japanese people.
The following materials can be used for 30 cakes:
(1) 2/3 cups of glutinous rice
(2) 1/3 cup of rice
(3) a little salt
(4) boiled sweet red beans 200g (or sweet red beans plus a portion of red bean paste)
(5) soybean powder
(6) stir-fried soybean flour 3 tablespoons
(7) sugar 2 tablespoons
1. Wash the glutinous rice and rice with water first, then soak the glutinous rice for about 2 hours. Put the glutinous rice and rice together in the rice cooker like ordinary steamed rice, add a little salt and 180cc of water. After steaming, don't open the lid in a hurry, it need to stuffy for 15 minutes.
2. Take out the rice and cut it with a spoon to make it sticky and soft, but still keep the shape of half a grain of rice.
3. Take out half of the sweet red beans pressed into the mud, the other half half are kept in granular shape.
4. Divide the rice into 5 larger rice balls and 10 smaller rice balls.
5. Press the rice balls into cakes, wrap them in red bean sand balls, and then roll the soybean evenly, that is, complete the soybean cake.
6. Press the big red beans into cakes and wrap them in small rice balls, that is, complete the peony cake.
1. The salt added in the practice is very small. You can also wrap the black sesame seeds, the same as the soy bean cake, the same proportion of sugar and a little salt. Soy flour must be cooked with fried soy flour. If you do it yourself, you should fry the soybeans and grind them into powder.
Briefly talk about the practice of sweet red beans. After red beans soaked overnight, add water to the pot. Pour water out after boiling. Then add water again to continue cooking. The water has just not passed the beans. Repeat this until the beans are soft and easy to squeeze the mud. And then add sugar and a little salt, stir well.
