Street Eats: A Taste of Yunnan With Miss Hai's Rose Cakes
Chinese patrons are by no means strangers to rose cakes ( 鲜花饼 xiānhuā bǐng), frequently bringing these sweet pastries back home for friends and family to try after visiting the gorgeous province of Yunnan in the south. Foreigners might also be familiar with these sweet treats, or at least the brand Miss Hai’s Cake, whose logo had long been prominently featured on Sanlitun Houjie next to the Mojito Man. Luckily, this branch of the pastry chain has survived the recent Great Brickening of that alley, also known as Dirty Bar Street, and moved to a smaller shop between Miniso and The Corner, only five meters away from their former location.
Miss Hai's boasts five different varieties of rose cakes: the original (RMB 9), and a few more elaborate RMB 10 options like rose with egg yolk, sweet and sour pineapple with rose, “soft waxy purple sweet potato with rose,” and pine seeds with rose. We bought one of each flavor for a RMB 45 box, and tried everything. Each of the indulgent cakes were wrapped separately and stuffed in a recyclable paper-box, and the staff warned us that the cakes would expire in seven days. No need to worry though – they were unlikely to make it to the end of the day let alone the week.
We followed the instructions on the box and heated them up in an oven for three minutes (you can also use a microwave). Generally, the pastries are flaky, with a dry texture. We suggest you begin with the best: the cake with pine seeds and rose filling, which has a nutty flavor and is less sweet than the original cakes. The pineapple with rose cake was also a winner, thanks to its crispy and flaky crust, and soft and sour pineapple with sweetened rose in the center. Both of them may not look glamorous, but they taste divine.
Then we got around to trying the weirdo: the cake with egg yolk and rose filling. Your level of enjoyment of this cake will depend on your opinion of Chinese salted duck egg yolk, and appears at first to look like an ordinary meat mooncake ( 鲜肉月饼 xiānròu yuèbǐng ), commonly found in Shanghai. But instead it's sweet, thanks to the rose filling, as well as a little savory from the salty egg yolk. It amounted to a major contradiction for our tastebuds, and yet Miss Hai's staff was savvy enough to balance those ingredients into a strange but satisfying harmony.
The original flavored cake wasn't as successful, sadly, and we suggest skipping it altogether. It has the necessary floral taste but its flavors were not as strong as the rose cakes we bought in Yunnan province during our last visit. The sweet potato cake was also a dud, amounting to little more than eye candy thanks to its purple hue, yet tasting the same as the original flavored cake.
Aside from the cakes, we noticed a handful of cheesy toast sitting quietly on a shelf in the corner, and it took some serious effort to refrain from ordering some. After all, the real reason for stopping by Miss Hai's is the rose cakes, and we've been lured in and let down by cheesy toast one too many times before. Instead, we recommend you bring home a few rose cakes, and let the floral flavors whisk your tastebuds away to Yunnan. As the American singer Frankie Laine once sang: "Rose, rose I love you, we might love rose with an aching heart, because after we finished the cakes in one go, there’s nothing left. Rose, rose, we can't resist you!" We know the feeling.
Miss Hai’s Cake
Daily 10am-10pm. 43 Sanlitun Beijie Nanli, Chaoyang District (182 1086 4430)
海小姐的玫瑰饼：朝阳区三里屯北街南里43号
More stories by this author here.
Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
Twitter: @flyingfigure
Instagram: @flyingfigure
Photos: Tracy Wang
