Anatomy of a cake

How a culinary import responds to local culture

In an age-old debate, the consensus appears to be that cakes have no precise culinary definition - just bread conditioned by extra bubbles and one's own cultural expectations for how desserts ought to taste.

In the case of layer cakes, now ubiquitous in bakery windows across China, this can be a perfect recipe for cross-cultural wires and disappointment.

Consider the appearance of a typical bakery cake: an airy foundation of an oven-baked, eggy concoction coated with a layer of what those in English-speaking nations may call frosting or icing.

Yet the words "frosting" and "icing" recall a texture of crystallized sugar and crunchy glaze that Chinese cakes share neither in composition nor taste.

Instead, Chinese cakes are glazed with naiyou (奶油, milk oil), a fluffy mass of cream, vegetable oil-based whipped topping, but only lightly tinged by a sweet taste. They often come topped with fresh fruit, but the creamy glaze can dry up or break down after an hour or so left in the open air. Underneath, the base is typically a sponge held up by beaten egg whites and filled with more cream and fruit.

Next to similarly tiered and glazed Western staples like the German chocolate cake or Boston cream pie, it's little wonder the strangeness of Chinese cakes and desserts are a perennial topic on expat blogs.

On the flip side, Chinese diners who encounter sugar-based icing, classic pound cake, custard or chocolate-cream fillings have had a one-word response to these Western staples: ni (腻), which translates as something like feeling sick from over-exposure to one taste.

In the case of Western desserts, or xidian, they usually mean that the dessert is too sweet, or 甜腻, though sometimes they are also considered too oily or rich, or 油腻. Whether your preferred poison is marzipan or meringue, fondant or butter cream, naiyou remains several magnitudes lighter and blander than all of these; the tartness of fruit also breaks up monotony of grease and sugar.

Stereotyped as a nation of rice-eaters, it can be easy to forget that wheat-based foods and desserts have their own indigenous roots in China. In ancient times, the Silk Road and maritime trading routes across Asia did brisk trade in desserts such as baklava and in ingredients like nuts, dried fruits, almond paste, and eventually sugarcane and vanilla.

However, globally, the concept of cake as a flour-based concoction made with refined sugar and raised by beaten eggs, rather than unleavened or raised by yeast, was associated with Europe toward the mid-17th century, doubtlessly helped by the large-scale cultivation of sugarcane in the New World colonies.

This history is reflected in the names of the culinary certificates at places like the Beijing New East Cuisine School; mastering wheat-flour creations like 饼 (bǐng) makes you an expert at Chinese-style flour-based snacks (中式面点), but knowing how to make and decorate a cake falls under Western-style flour-based snacks (西式面点), or simply Western snacks (西点).

It is unclear when European cakes arrived in China. According to Imperial court writings, Emperor Qianlong and Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) were both fond of a snack called 槽子糕 (cáozigāo), a small round cake made for breakfast using fresh eggs, white sugar and flour. It's now considered a delicacy in Beijing and Tianjin.

References to Western restaurants and European desserts being consumed by the elite classes in the Imperial capital can also be found in the Qing Records of Petty Matters and the Record of the Awakened Garden, which contains a section on recipes for the most fashionable desserts of the mid-18th century.

The Qing Records of Petty Matters tells us that by at least the 19th century, Western desserts had become common enough in China to be grouped into five categories: meringues, "wet" desserts (such as ice cream), bread, crispy pastries such as cookies, and cake.

In terms of taste, texture and method of preparation, cakes in China appear to have developed a style of their own by the 18th century. In the Record of the Awakened Garden, compiled in 1782, the primary mode of cooking egg-based dangao and "Western cake" was by steaming. This would have provided a softer, airier and moist texture. Those making the egg-based cake also have the option of making a dry cake by warming up the mixture on a stove before baking in a small metal furnace.

The commercial bakery offering Western-inspired birthday cakes, Danish pastries and shortbreads had their start in the 1980s and '90s on the Chinese mainland. Well-known chains such as Holiland and Christine were both founded in 1992 and were later joined by Weidome, Auspicious Phoenix, Ichido and Kengee. It was also around the same time that it became tradition in China to serve cake at birthday celebrations.

Today, the fruit and naiyou cake is mainly referred to as "birthday cake", while more elaborate fondant-based cakes for weddings and expositions tend to be the job of boutique bakeries and specialty chains such as Black Swan.

If the search results of group-buying websites are any indication, in recent years mousses with stenciled astrological signs are becoming the trendy option.

The icing versus naiyou distinction aside, another point of departure between the English and Chinese language of cakes is that a cake in Chinese is not a cake until it is properly garbed. The modern word dangao refers usually to the final product on the shelf once it is coated in naiyou and decorated, while the part that comes out of the oven is more accurately the pizi (坯子, base) or dangao pi (蛋糕坯, cake base), not to be sold or consumed separately.

The difference in the texture of naiyou, and sugar icing leads to several unique cake-decorating techniques and patterns found among Chinese bakeries. Although cream is less stable and breaks down more quickly than sugar icing, a skilled decorator will be able to pipe the same types of decoration with the same level of intricacy. However, the lines, borders and the edges of flower petals made with naiyou are noticeably smoother and shinier, with a rounded and flowing appearance compared with the jagged and stiff textures of icing or fondant.

The 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, the red-tipped "longevity peach"

(寿桃, shòutáo), mahjong pieces, and the bearded "old sage of longevity" (老寿星, lǎoshòuxīng) are staple Chinese- decoration on birthday cakes. These can be piped directly onto the cake using cream as 3D figures, a required skill for decorators.

Due perhaps to the sensitivity of naiyou to room temperature and heat from a decorator's hands, cream-based Chinese cake decorations are typically completed quickly. Provided you don't visit at a busy time or with an abnormally complicated order, you can walk into most bakeries in China and leave with your decorated birthday cake in 15 minutes or less.

Online tutorials for making 3D decorations usually clock in at five to 10 minutes, even including explanations. There is also a sub-genre of videos aimed at professionals and amateurs, where the appeal seems to at least partly be watching the decorator pipe the most complicated figure in as short a time as possible, usually one to two minutes.

TLC has some competition.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com

The World of Chinese

(China Daily Africa Weekly 08/19/2016 page23)