Husband and Wife Cake

Wife Cake

Husband Cake

Good morning!! It is a really rainy and dark day in Manipal today. Wanted to sleep in but compulsion got the better of me and now I’m sitting in class.

This semester we are doing Asian Cuisine and currently we are involved with China. Needless to say I’ve been cooking and eating a lot of Chinese food of late. The desserts in the menu are however extremely few and far between.  So I did a bit of research. Now the Chinese aren’t people with the biggest sweet tooth in the world but the sweets they eat are really VERY sweet. The main components of Chinese desserts are glutinous rice, dry fruits, honey, wheat flour, agar agar, sweet bean pastes and eggs.

While the wheat flour sweets such as Darshan, Bing, Moon Cake and Sun Cake are fried or baked, the sweets made using glutinous rice such as Nian Gao, Red Tortoise Cake (Ang Ku Kueh) and Tangyuan are usually steamed. The Chinese also consume a variety of sweet hot soups known as Tong Sui as a dessert. Chinese fruit jellies set with agar agar, honey and cane sugar candies (Tang) and sweet shaved ices (Baobing) are also popularly eaten as desserts.

The most interesting dessert I came across was the ‘Wife Cake’. This cake is also known as Lou Po, Sweetheart Cake and Old Woman Cake, and is a dessert which originated in the Canton region in the south of China. This cake is a flaky pastry with a filling of candied winter melon, almond, sesame seeds and five spice powder. The story behind the name ‘Wife Cake’ is however what causes it to be interesting.

The story goes a mysterious and deadly disease broke out in a village in China. A young couple was living in a poor part of this village. The husband’s father caught this disease but the cure was not affordable. The wife sold herself as a slave to get the money for her father-in-law’s treatment. The old man got cured but the husband was grief-stricken at having lost his wife. He started making these cakes and selling them on the roads.

This story has two endings however. One says he earned enough money selling these cakes and bought his wife back. While the other version says that he stopped for tea at a teashop while he was selling these cakes and ate a similar cake with his tea. He immediately recognised the flavour and found that his wife was making these for the teashop owner. Thus they were united.

This cake has a partner too. The ‘Husband Cake’. This cake is exactly the same, except the star anise flavour that it has. The story behind this name is that a man wanted to be a government official but did not have money to fund taking the exam for the position. His wife started making these cakes and selling them. This money she earned funded his exam and he came first. He then went on to becoming a high position government official.

Both the cakes have stories of sacrifice and love. This is what makes these cakes so special. Tell me stories like this that you may know. Waiting for your comments. :)