The traditional variant is from the Guangdong region, where the filling consists of candied wintermelon. The candied wintermelon mash money bag cake then combined with white sesame seeds and glutinous rice flour. Although this spice is of Chinese origin, it is not traditionally used in sweetheart cakes.
Sweetheart cake may be confused with the husband cake, which uses star anise in its filling. There are many legends that attempt to explain the origins of the sweetheart cake. One tells the tale of a couple that lived a very poor life, in imperial China. They loved each other and lived in a small village.
Suddenly, a mysterious disease spread and the husband’s father became very sick. The couple spent all of their money in order to treat the man’s father. The wife sold herself as a slave in exchange for money to buy medicine for her father-in-law. There is another version where the man went searching for his wife after he earned enough money to buy her back. In his search, he had a cup of tea at a local teahouse, when he suddenly recognised the pastry they were serving with the tea. The man 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’s family. The new pastry was found to taste better than the dim sums that were being sold in teahouses, and the chef proudly told everyone it was made by his wife, hence it was named “Wife Cake”. Another version of the story is that a man had a wife with an extremely sedentary lifestyle who refused to leave her house to satisfy her hunger. One day, the man needed to leave for a few days on a business trip but needed a solution to continue providing food to his wife.
So the man decided to create a wintermelon paste pastry with a large hole in the middle to hang it around her neck so that she would not go hungry. 40 Hong Kong foods we can’t live without”. Cantonese Pastries: Husband and Wife Cake”. Enter the characters you see below Sorry, we just need to make sure you’re not a robot. Cake decorating tools will take your baked goods to the next level. We researched options from Wilton, VORCAY, and more so you can choose the right tools.