🍽️ Fermented Bean Curd Cake

Cookie with fermented bean curd, sweet-savory Chaozhou pastry.

Fermented bean curd cake, or furu bing, is a famous traditional souvenir pastry from the old city of Chaozhou. Its special touch is a filling that includes nanru—red fermented bean curd—mixed with cubes of fatty pork, sesame, peanut, garlic, rock sugar and scallion, producing a sweet-savory, aromatic center. The crust is made with lard, wrapped around the filling, pressed in moulds, brushed with egg and baked until golden. The finished cakes are small, glossy and rich, with a crumbly, melt-in-the-mouth crust and a soft center; the first taste is the salty umami of the bean curd, followed by the sweetness of sugar and sesame, with a faint garlic note and a long finish. Chaozhou locals eat them alongside gongfu tea and buy them as gifts for out-of-town relatives. That sweet-savory balance is typical of the rich, fragrant, indulgent style of Chaozhou pastries.