🍽️ Huazhou Tuoluo Cake

Cake with coconut and peanut filling, a western Guangdong Mid-Autumn pastry.

Huazhou tuoluo cake is a traditional Mid-Autumn pastry of Huazhou in Maoming, ranking alongside Cantonese mooncakes and Wuchuan mooncakes in western Guangdong. It uses a wheat-flour skin wrapped around a filling of shredded coconut, sesame, peanut, pork belly, melon seeds and rock sugar, pressed into a round cake, stamped with patterns and baked. The finished cake has a flaky, layered crust and a filling rich with coconut aroma, sweet yet slightly savory; the pork cubes render down so that only their oiliness remains, without any greasiness. At Mid-Autumn, Huazhou families must buy tuoluo cakes as gifts and cut them up when gathering under the moon. Compared with common Cantonese mooncakes, the coconut-shred filling shows the coastal character of western Guangdong, making it a representative of the region's Mid-Autumn food culture and the most recognizable Huazhou souvenir.