DIY Suncakes and the International Pastry Festival that You Never Heard About

I did know about the 2012 International Pastry Festival of Taichung, but only because I live across the street from the park that was hosting it. Not because it was well-advertised, which it wasn't or because many foreigners seem to care- which they don't.  Still, you gotta give the local government points for the effort, it's just, as I am growing used to understanding, their execution was lacking.

Part of the 'festival' which seemed to me to be just another series of tents set up around Wenxin Park was a 'DIY baking event for foreigners.'

I heard this from my lovely colleague Liz. We signed up. We got no response. We showed up. We signed up again.

Signing up was easy enough

We got on a bus. It was 8:30 a.m. on a chilly Saturday.

Come on kids, get on the bus

Nevermind that the the DIY activity was only a small fraction of the day's itinerary. We'll look past that. Never mind that the other parts of this glorified tour were spent at places like the Taiwan Museum of Legal Documents.

Why are you taking me here? I just want to bake something!

Nevermind that it started at 8:30am on a Saturday. We'll look past all of that. My friends and I kept smiling, hoping that we'd get our hands into some dough sooner rather than later.

These bikes are much more fun than  prosecutorial documents

It was worth it to see the technique that goes into make suncakes. They were always kind of a mystery to me. I was never really bowled over by their flavor, but more by their texture. There is a thick, sugary filling inside, and flaky layers around the outside. I couldn't get my head around how they actually put them together.

Ah, a chocolate suncake

As it turns out, the flaky texture that makes suncakes so unique and so messy to eat, (there's usually a pile of flakes left behind) is nothing so mysterious: It is a laminated dough. The unique thing about the process is that it is actually three doughs folded and rolled together.

A Tale of Three Doughs

It's really a blending of traditions:

It is really part dumpling, part croissant.

It reminds me of something from Entenmann's that I used to eat as a kid...God only know what it was. A danish of some kind?

Can you spot the difference?

Ultimately, I couldn't score the recipes for the doughs. I don't think that there is any expectation from the bakery that people would actually try to do this by themselves at home. I think the idea is more "come to the bakery and get your hands dirty, take some pictures, then take something home in a pretty box." It wasn't very educational. The explanations were short; and my Mandarin is, well, less than good. All I got out of it was There are three doughs, one very buttery, one very dry and well kneaded, and one sugary dough.

Each dough was flattened, rolled up like a carpet, rolled again, then stuffed with the next dough. My hands were quite greasy, so I didn't get to take many pictures of the process, but I hope to recreate it.

Finished suncake, oven-ready

We were encouraged to make cute shapes. This is Taiwan, after all.

Can you guess my number?

The end result was better than I expected, though I think the baker left the batch in there a bit long to make sure the thicker ones were all cooked. Hey, they were fresh from the oven!

Everyone crowded the poor staff, really excited to  see the fruits of their 'labor'.

The small room did smell quite delicious.

The pastry chef approved of my technique. For real. I asked him when I can come and help in the kitchen. He said anytime!

Pao Chuan has a long history in Taiwan and Japan. This DIY event was at the Ziyou Road shop in Taichung.

Taipei Neihu Come Come Soybean Milk 台北 內 湖來來 豆 醬

The first visit I made to Taipei Neihu Lai Lai Dou Jiang was with the slowest driver in the world: My former landlady. In the back of her car, with her two kids, 8 and 10, moving at about 20km/h I sat eagerly awaiting our arrival.

She lived in New York while studying at Julliard and out of a sense of gratitude towards New Yorkers, to whom she owed a debt for their kindness, she wanted to take Britt and I to eat in "a real Taiwanese food place." It was her assertion that here you could find the kind of real food that Taiwanese eat, not the stuff geared towards western appetites. I was sure that Taiwanese eat all kinds of food, not just from this  one place, but I was encouraged nonetheless, eager to eat among the locals. I had been living here only a month or two by then and finding good food was becoming a problem. 

Scallions ready to go!

We put our stomachs in her hands, letting her order for us. 

We wound up with soup dumplings 小龍 湯 包, soybean soup  鹹 豆  醬 xian dou jiang that had been curdled in some way, very salty, along with some beef noodle soup 牛肉 麵.

Never worry about parking. Just pull right up to the kitchen

I won't lie. I didn't like it. The texture of the soup was bizarre, the stuff of Andrew Zimmernland and seemed too salty. The dumplings were okay, and the beef noodle soup was alright. I think it was just too much culture shock for my new-to-Taiwan self.

the steaming sidewalk

I never went back there for months, having been turned off by what I ordered, but the next time we went back, we resolved to try some different things.

They know their soybean milk

And we did, months later: The soybean milk. The soybean milk here is very unique. It has a kind of toasted flavor, and it is lightly sweetened, and it has a bit of thickness to it. Believe me when I tell you it is unlike the stuff you find in the States in cardboard cartons. It shouldn't surprise one though, the name of the place, dou jiang  豆 醬, means soybean milk. It is their specialty.

soup dumplings, beef and scallion roll, soybean milk

 You don't even need to speak a load of Mandarin to get what you want, you can usually just point and smile for most things. Scallions and egg omelettes, dan bings, taro cakes, pastries. Friendly smiling staff. When I leave Taiwan, it will be places like this I will miss most. 

an ever-changing pastry selection

Aside from the delicious soup dumplings, turnip cake 蘿 蔔 糕, onion cake 蔥 油 餅, there is also an interesting variety of baked  goods, almost all heavy on the sesame. I once had a kind of sesame doughnut there that was heavenly. They also fry longstrips of dough  (yo tiao) 油 條 made for dipping into soup and soymilk alike. good idea!

Everything out in the open.

Ready to serve

Brittany's dip for her dumplings: soy sauce, ginger, chili oil, rice vinegar, sesame oil,  chili paste

And my favorite of all, turnip cake

The joint has become our kind of hangover/comfort food place, great for a late breakfast on a weekend. They are open at all hours of the night, too. 

The ambiance is pleasantly chaotic.

But there is more to it than the food on the plate. The big open dining room, the families enjoying their snacks together, and the open prep area makes it a great place to just sit, eat and watch people. They are baking right on the sidewalk, after all.

Cookin' on the sidewalk.

If you never visited a place like this in Taichung, please do. You are missing out. This one is especially good though there are a great number of these kinds of snackhouses in Taichung and elsewhere. 

This particular one is at the intersection of Wenxin N. Rd and Xitun Rd. There is another on Xiangshang Rd near just east of Dongxing road, however, they are newly opened and still perfecting things. 

Here is another blog post about a visit to a similar place