Pineapple cakes are a popular treat in Asia, there are lots of different fruits available as alternatives. This is the first time I've seen one of my favourite fruits, hami melon, as the main ingredient. And I was very pleased to discover that it actually tasted and smelled like hami melon! Would have wanted more jam in the cake, but still great. It puts me in mind to make some hami melon jam.
I like roselle (or hibiscus) and the Taiwanese pineapple cakes, this combination sounded great (and a welcome surprise from my beautiful Bride). The roselle in the cake is jam made from roselle juice with wax gourd.
I would be very generous in saying that this tastes a lot like the roselle I like, the excellent sourness it has. The roselle jam is quite subtle, but not bad. An interesting idea, but not well delivered.
Pineapple Cake is the traditional form of this cake, but there are other kinds of fillings. What I dreaded about this cherry blossoms cake, was that it would be the overly strong cherry flavour of many cherry sweets and desserts. I was pleased to taste a more subtle cherry flavour, one can imagine that it might be the essence of sweet-scented cherry blossoms blooming in the Spring (albeit, I doubt that real cherry blossoms taste of anything). This has quickly become my favourite of these Taiwanese desserts.
I snagged these from work, the President of the company I work for had got it from one of his business trips (and perhaps didn't quite realize how good a green tea this is). I have talked about High Mountain Tea or Jin Xuan Oolong before (though that one was not so good), having enjoyed the gift of such I got from my sister and brother-in-law a few years ago.
This is a good version of High Mountain Tea, certainly the leaves are whole (and unfurl into long leaves when placed in hot water). The taste that you look for, a tingling in the back of the mouth, is there. I gifted some of the large bag to my sister and brother-in-law, coming full circle, and they both agreed that this is good tasting tea.
The leaves are rolled into little balls.
We found this Taiwanese brand of pineapple cake in this little Taiwanese store on The Chase in Streetsville, we wanted to compare it to the more ubiquitous Love's Flower ones.
I think that they taste quite good, at least as good as any packaged ones I've tasted. Certainly, these ones tasted fairly fresh. I wonder if they are supposed to be special, called Royal Family.
Similar to the Pineapple Cake from Kumei Enterprises, this is a shortbread pastry with durian jam within. There isn't really a similar meaning to this kind of cake (pineapple = prosperity), it is just another version, but still liked.
This I didn't find so easily as the pineapple version; other flavours are more popular, I guess. I found the durian fragrance to be strong and inviting when you open the small package, but the durian flavour as you bit into the cake was not so strong, and it had several very chewy bits, so a little disappointing for this durian fan. I think I prefer the original pineapple flavour.
Pineapple is a symbol of prosperity for the Chinese, and originally these cakes, much bigger and rounder when first created, were only sold for the mid-Autumn festival and for engagements in Taiwan (very similar to mooncakes in mainland China). Nowadays, they have transformed to the traditional square, and can be given as gifts year-round. Inside the shortbread pastry, made with flour, milk powder, butter (originally lard), egg, sugar and shortening (from palm and/or soybean oil), is a pineapple jam, made, as I read, paired with white gourds, which gives it a better texture and flavour.
These are quite tasty, and I can see why they are much beloved. They are definitely sweeter than the Singaporean version, though no less good. I found this particular brand in almost any Chinese supermarket in Mississauga.
The idea of rose and tea is not new, and is one I have enjoyed before (there is a certain tea that I got from China as a gift, that has rose leaves in it, that I really enjoyed, and am still searching for). This tea from Taiwan features dried rose petals from Europe and oolong tea. I like the smell of the rose that comes out when steeped, the petals seem very fresh. The tea is quite good as well.
This is the vegetarian ham that we normally buy, it's made of soybean protein and vegetarian spices and is produced in Taiwan. It's a very versatile "meat"; you can steam, fry, boil, grill or stir-fry it. It's quite good tasting as well.
Jin Xuan Oolong, or High Mountain Tea, is a special variety of Camellia Sinesis (tea) that can grow at very high elevations, the fog or clouds present high in the mountains make for excellent growing conditions for oolong, producing a fragrant and light creamy tea. Oolong is tea that is between green and black, closer to green, though it lacks the grassiness of green tea, nor does it have the rosy, sweet aroma of black tea. Some of the best comes from Taiwan. I remember being gifted with a quantity of special 'High Mountain Tea', from Taiwan, very good, with a very sweet flavour, you got a kind of 'numbness' at the back of the teeth when you drank it. Now, this is definitely high mountain tea, and very flavourful, but not the same quality of that wonderful tea. And where did I get it? At Zen Gardens, an excellent vegetarian restaurant, specifically at their Mississauga location, which I find not so good as their Cambridge location.
Certainly, the idea of dried fruit in North America is much more popular than dried vegetables, I've seen some in Bulk Barn, but the vast majority of the dried products are fruit-oriented. It was interesting to see then, this dried vegetable product from Taiwan, indeed there were others, dried green beans, for one, but this 100% natural, no trans fats, no hydrogenated oil and no preservative product from Taiwan, Pumpkin Chips, with glucose, salt and palm oil, looked interesting. And it does taste like pumpkin, an Asian pumpkin certainly. I found this in a Chinese supermarket.
We were at the New Year Fair at the Fo Guang Shang Temple of Toronto in Mississauga, and we decided to again partake of the wonderful vegetarian fare at the Tea House, simple yet flavourful.
Here is a noodle soup with sauce, the noodles are wheat noodles.
Here is the same as the above dish, except the noodles are made from rice.
Here are two different pictures of the Fresh Fruits tea. See how lovely an orange colour it is.
The Fo Guang Shang Temple of Toronto had a Lunar New Year Fair, with lots of things for sale, sweets, baked goods, foods, crafts, flowers and food, we picked up several things, these Taiwanese cakes were some of them.
These were green tea flavoured. Quite tasty, with a chewy green tea intererior.
These were strawberry flavoured. Also good, but it seemed to taste more like pineapple than strawberry.
