The defining pastry of Yunnan: a lard-laminated mooncake filled with salty-sweet aged Xuanwei ham and honey, baked until the crust turns hard and deep golden-brown. It is simultaneously sweet and savoury, crisp and yielding inside, and nothing like the syrup-soft Cantonese style. Yunnan ham mooncake is officially recognised as one of China's five major mooncake schools.
The lineage of Yunnan ham mooncake runs back more than three hundred years. According to local accounts, when the last Ming court retreated to Kunming in the mid-seventeenth century, a royal cook prepared steamed dumplings filled with Xuanwei ham and honey that the emperor praised warmly. The recipe gradually passed into civilian hands. During the Xianfeng reign (1851–1861), a confectioner named Hu Shan and his son opened the Hexianglou shop (合香楼) in Kunming and transformed the dish from steamed to baked—producing the first mooncake-format version called the four-tael ham cake. Around the turn of the twentieth century, brothers Chen Huiquan and Chen Huisheng, former Hexianglou employees, founded Jiqingxiang (吉庆祥) and created the signature hard-shell ham mooncake—its outer layer baked firm and encasing a thousand-layer lard-laminated interior. Under the Republic, Yunnan governor Long Yun dispatched soldiers to manage the queues outside Jiqingxiang. In 1956, eighteen Kunming pastry shops were merged into the state-run Jiqingxiang factory. During the Cultural Revolution, provincial party secretary Zhou Xing proposed renaming the hard-shell ham mooncake Yunnan ham mooncake (云腿月饼), the name it carries today. In 2022 the craft was listed on the fifth batch of Yunnan provincial intangible cultural heritage.
The crust cracks with a sharp, almost ceramic snap, and then the inside gives immediately—layer after lard-scented layer dissolving against the tongue. The filling is dense and sticky: the ham's deep umami surfacing through honeyed sweetness, the fat of the ham having caramelised slightly in the oven. Salt and sweet keep passing the baton to each other until the last bite.
Lard is the structural key to the pastry's hard-crisp exterior. With a melting point of around 36°C and a high proportion of saturated fats, lard coats the gluten network in the flour and prevents excessive gluten development before baking; in the oven, steam trapped between fat-separated layers creates a shattering lamination rather than a chewy crumb. The filling's combination of aged Xuanwei ham—with its high concentration of free glutamic acid from long fermentation—and honey undergoes Maillard browning at the 185°C baking temperature, developing caramel and roasted-meat aromas in the filling and browning the crust surface to its characteristic dark amber. Honey's hygroscopic fructose also keeps the filling moist for days after baking, a critical advantage for a mooncake historically traded across Southeast Asia.
Variations
Modern producers make a soft-shell version using a syrup-based dough for markets that prefer a less hard texture. Jiqingxiang has expanded the filling range to include ham-and-matsutake and ham-and-edible flower variants. Mini 25 g single-serve versions are now ubiquitous. Some producers substitute Nuodeng ham for Xuanwei, producing a more intensely savoury and mineral-forward filling.
On the Palate
Where Yunnan Ham Mooncake sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 15
How it's made
7 steps · 45 min
- 130 min
Prepare the ham filling: cut 300 g of aged Xuanwei ham into 5 mm dice; steam over high heat for 10 minutes to fully cook and mellow the salt. Cool, then combine with 80 g honey, 50 g white sugar, and 60 g toasted plain flour until a firm, cohesive paste forms. Divide into 15 balls of about 30 g each.
- 220 min
Make the outer water-lard pastry: sift 200 g plain flour into a bowl; rub in 60 g cold lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs; add 70 ml cold water and bring together into a smooth, firm dough. Cover and rest for 20 minutes.
Watch outRub the cold lard into the flour just until it looks like coarse crumbs — warm hands melt it and you lose the shatter in the crust.
- 315 min
Make the inner oil-lard pastry: combine 150 g plain flour with 90 g room-temperature lard and work until a soft, cohesive pastry forms (no water added). Rest covered for 15 minutes.
- 430 min
Laminate the dough: divide both pastry portions into 15 equal balls. Flatten each water-lard ball, encase one oil-lard ball inside, seal the edges, and roll out to an oval. Fold in thirds, roll out again, fold once more to create visible lamination layers. Rest the covered dough balls for 10 minutes.
Watch outRoll and fold gently, keeping the two doughs from tearing into each other — clean, unbroken layers are what give the crust its flaky shatter.
- 520 min
Fill and shape: flatten each laminated dough ball into a 9 cm circle. Centre one ham-filling ball on it, bring up the edges, seal tightly, and place sealed-side down into a mooncake mould or round 5 cm cutter. Press to compact. Arrange on a parchment-lined baking tray.
- 625 min
Glaze and bake: brush the tops with beaten egg yolk. Bake in an oven preheated to 185°C for 22–25 minutes until the surface is deep golden-brown and the crust has hardened and set. Remove and cool completely on a wire rack—do not eat while hot as the crust will be soft.
Watch outPull them at deep golden-brown when the crust has hardened; the shell is soft straight from the oven — let it cool fully before you judge the crisp.
- 71440 min
Rest overnight before serving: after complete cooling, store in an airtight container for at least 12 hours. The lard fully hydrates the crust, the filling settles, and the ham-and-honey aromas meld—the mooncakes taste noticeably better the following day.
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