Teochew Lard Mooncake

In Chaoshan the mooncake is called lao-bing — lao, in the Chaoshan dialect, meaning lard — because lard is worked into the flour to make the skin; the cake is, literally, a "lard cake." Its making is a long-standing Mid-Autumn tradition of the region, though its exact origins are not securely dated; gifting lard mooncakes at Mid-Autumn has long been local custom, and the cake is a carrier of homesickness for Teochew communities abroad. What sets it apart belongs to its pastry, not legend: the Teochew lard mooncake is a true flaky pastry of the same family as the Suzhou-style mooncake — a laminated skin of repeatedly folded and rolled lard shortening and water-lard dough — and so stands wholly apart from the Cantonese mooncake's soft golden syrup skin. Famous makers are associated with the craft, among them century-old houses of the old Chaozhou city and the lard mooncakes of Guiyu in Chaoyang, and the cakes are most esteemed thin-skinned and crisp, with a filling that is thick yet clean on the palate.

The skin shatters into thin, dry, pale leaves that flake and fall as you bite — short and crisp from the lard, with the faint savor of it under the sweetness — quite unlike the dense, chewy give of a syrup-skin mooncake. Beneath is a thick layer of filling: black-bean paste deep and smooth, mung-bean paste cool and clean, or taro soft and fragrant, the sweetness rich but not heavy, sometimes cut by translucent bits of candied winter melon or a thread of salt from a yolk. The pleasure is the contrast of a fragile, leaf-crisp lard crust against a dense, smooth, generous paste — light to the bite where a Cantonese mooncake is soft and dense.

The flake is laminated pastry. Two doughs are made: a water-lard dough of flour, lard and water, and a flourless shortening dough of flour rubbed only with lard. The water dough is kneaded until its gluten forms an extensible film — some cooks scald part of the flour first, gelatinizing a little of its starch — so it stretches without tearing; the lard dough, having no water, develops no gluten at all and so stays soft and short. The water dough is wrapped around the shortening, then rolled and folded again and again, building dozens of alternating layers of dough and fat. In the oven the lard between the leaves melts and the water in the dough flashes to steam, and that steam, trapped layer by layer, pushes the sheets apart and sets them crisp and separate — the puffing that makes the skin flaky. This is the same flaky-pastry principle as the Suzhou-style mooncake and stands apart from the Cantonese mooncake, whose skin is a soft dough of flour bound with invert syrup, alkaline water and oil that bakes dense, supple and glossy rather than layered. A high oven heat is needed for the shortening to expand and the leaves to lift.