A round, flat Taichung pastry the size of a palm, its pale crust shattering into countless flaky layers around a thin core of soft, faintly sweet maltose filling. Eaten with strong tea, it is the city's signature gift cake — the kind travelers carry home by the boxful from the old shops on Ziyou Road.
Sun cake comes from Taichung, central Taiwan. It was developed by pastry chef Wei Qinghai (魏清海), known as Master A-Ming (阿明师), who trained in the Kun-school (崑派) tradition of maltose cakes and refined the old form into the thin, flaky-crusted pastry sold today. The name was coined by Lin Shaosong (林绍崧), who with his wife founded the Tai Yang Tang (太阳堂) bakery around the 1950s and popularized the cake; he is credited with naming the round, sun-like pastry 'sun cake' and making it famous. Because the name was never registered as a trademark, many of Wei's apprentices opened their own 'Tai Yang Tang' shops, and Ziyou Road in central Taichung once held four sun-cake shops in a row — at numbers 21, 23, 25 and 27 — each claiming to be the original. The rivalry boiled over into a public dispute over the rightful 'inventor' in 1998.
Press a sun cake and the top crust caves in a shower of pale flakes — it shatters before you even bite, and you eat it over a cupped hand to catch the crumbs. Past the dry, leafy outer layers the center turns chewy and soft: a thin film of maltose, lightly sweet, just tacky enough to pull a faint thread and cling to the roof of the mouth. Crisp shell, soft sweet core; best chased with hot, bitter tea.
Sun cake is built on Chinese laminated 'crisp-pastry': a water-and-fat dough (you-pi) wraps a pure flour-and-fat dough (you-su). Rolled flat, rolled up, flattened and rolled again — two or three times — the soft fat dough is stretched into many thin sheets separated by the more elastic water dough. In the oven, around 190°C, the fat melts and films each sheet, blocking the water phase and steaming the layers apart instead of letting them fuse; the gluten sets dry and the crust shatters into leaves. The filling is mostly maltose with a little butter, sugar and flour. Maltose is strongly hygroscopic and resists crystallizing, so after baking the core stays soft, faintly threading rather than turning brittle — and a cake left a couple of days sealed actually softens as the filling draws moisture back in.
Variations
The Ziyou Road shops each guard a slightly different crust and a maltose filling of their own balance. Modern bakeries sell honey-maltose, salted-egg-yolk, mochi-filled, and milk versions, and bite-sized 'mini' sun cakes for gift boxes. Pineapple cake (fengli su), a square shortcrust pastry with pineapple jam, is Taiwan's other great gift cake and often sits beside sun cakes on the same shelf, but it is a different pastry, not a variant.
On the Palate
Where Sun Cake sits in the Taiwanese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 12How it's made
10 steps · 40 min
- 135 min
Make the water-fat dough (you-pi): mix all-purpose flour, softened butter, powdered sugar and warm water into a smooth, elastic dough. Rest, covered, 30 minutes.
- 215 min
Make the fat dough (you-su): rub cake flour into softened butter until it forms a soft, cohesive paste. Divide both doughs into 12 equal portions each.
- 312 min
Make the filling: knead maltose with powdered sugar, then work in a little water, softened butter and a small amount of flour until you have a soft, pliable paste. Roll into 12 small balls.
- 48 min
Flatten one water-dough piece, wrap it fully around one fat-dough piece, and pinch the seam shut.
- 512 min
Roll the parcel out into a long ox-tongue shape, then roll it up from one end into a coil. Turn it, roll out long again, and coil up a second time. This builds the layers.
Watch outRoll into an ox-tongue, coil, then roll and coil a second time — this repeated stretching is what builds the many thin layers that shatter crisp.
- 614 min
Stand a coil on its cut end, press flat, and roll into a thin round wrapper. Place a maltose ball in the center, gather the edges over it and seal into a smooth ball, seam down.
- 710 min
Gently press each filled ball flat, then roll into a flat round disc about a centimeter thick. Keep the seam underneath; do not let filling break through.
Watch outRoll each filled ball flat with the seam underneath and never let the filling break through — a torn skin leaks maltose that scorches in the oven.
- 86 min
Arrange on a lined tray, seam down. Optionally brush a thin egg wash or dock the tops once with a fork.
- 914 min
Bake at 190°C for about 12-15 minutes, until the tops are pale gold and the layers have puffed and set.
Watch outBake at one hundred ninety degrees just until pale gold and the layers puff and set — colour it darker and the delicate crust dries out and the filling hardens.
- 1015 min
Cool completely on a rack. Eat fresh and shattering, or seal in a tin for a day or two to let the filling soften.
Archive tool suggestions — not reviewed
These legacy suggestions have not been evidence-reviewed and are not presented as required tools.
