Beijing Eight Pieces

The "Beijing Eight Pieces" are eight kinds of Beijing-style pastries with different shapes and flavors.

Beijing Eight Pieces were first created by the Imperial Household of the Qing Dynasty, and then handed down to the public. They are made of eight kinds of ingredients such as date paste, plum, raisin, rose, bean paste, sugar, banana, and pepper, etc. They use oil and water to make the skin, and then wrap the skin around the filling and bake it.

In the past, Beijing eight pieces were divided into big eight pieces, small eight pieces and fine eight pieces, collectively known as eight pieces. Nowadays, they are divided into three categories: crispy skin, hard skin, and peach cake. These three categories of varieties of patterns are similar, only the size of the block type of difference.

Pastry eight pieces is made of fine white flour and oil, sugar and a variety of fruits, its main varieties are phoenix Yuan cake, round begonias, long begonias, sheep's tails peach, bundles of line cake, Buddha's hand pastry and other eight kinds. The fillings of these eight kinds of pastries are melon strip filling, plum filling, meat filling, hawthorn filling, date paste filling and fine sand filling.

The hard-skinned eight pieces are made of raw and cooked white flour, sugar, rice flour, egg yolk, cooking oil as raw materials, and its main varieties are longevity peach, egg yolk pastry, white sugar cake, egg yolk rose cake, fruit cake, hawthorn cake, etc., and its fillings are fine sand filling, date paste filling, white sugar filling, rose filling, hawthorn filling, fruit filling and so on.

The eight pieces of peach cake are made of white flour, sugar, cooking oil, rice flour, peach kernel, cinnamon and egg liquid. The main varieties are peach cake, almond cake, white sesame cake, black sesame cake, peanut cake and patterned cake.

The Origin of Beijing Eight Pieces

"Beijing Eight Pieces" was developed on the basis of the palace confectionery "Big Eight Pieces", which was traditionally known as "Big Eight Pieces".

"Beijing Eight Pieces" is developed on the basis of "Big Eight Pieces", the traditional "Big Eight Pieces" is the representative varieties of Beijing-flavored pastries, and the famous pastries coming out from the palace are loved by people from all walks of life, and have become the first choice of the people of the capital for a long time as the gifts.

In fact, Beijing, these "imperial food production" of pastries, on the origin of the head is almost all folk "imitation goods". Ming Mu Zong in not before the throne, often sent to the East Chang'an Street to buy snacks, after the emperor, but also on the streets of the delicious memory. Sweets room know the emperor's mind, they went to those pastry store "undercover", learn the production method, and spend a lot of silver procurement of raw materials, imitation of some of them out.

The emperor can taste the origin of each very professionally, and very proud to tell the imperial chefs, these "high-priced" snacks, in the street at random can be bought.

The capital of the Ming Dynasty was moved from Nanjing to Beijing, and Jiangnan dim sum naturally flowed into the capital. After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, and imported Saqima and other Manchu pastries. Different flavors, different varieties, different methods, in the hundreds of years, mutual influence and integration, thus forming a unique "Beijing-style dim sum". After the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, many versions of "Beijing Eight Pieces" have evolved with the times.

Refer to Baidu Encyclopedia - Beijing Eight Pieces