With the Dragon Boat Festival 端午節 around the corner, we're already dreaming of those aromatic, meltingly tender bites of savory pork filled zong zi and sweet red bean zong zi. YUM! I love festival foods!
This year, in addition to these traditional festival dumplings I decided to try making a personal childhood favorite of mine, the delectable Chinese Sachima Soft Flour Pastry Cake 沙琪瑪 (or 馬仔 as it is known locally in HK), a light, fluffy, tender pastry made of fried dough strips tossed with delicious caramelized syrup, dotted with raisins and roasted sesame seeds, then pressed and cut into delectable squares. Kinda like a Chinese rice krispie cake in principle but uniquely different and even more delicious!
I remember that my folks used to go all the way downtown to the Chinese bakery to bring back these treats, packed carefully in a beautiful pink box tied with a red string. My sisters and I, the three of us, would fight fiercely over the biggest squares of sachima, which my sneaky older sister usually won. Nowadays my little girl loves it as well and so we decided to make it together, it was so much fun!