On the Double Ninth Festival, people will eat Double Ninth Gao (or Cake). In Chinese, gao (cake) has the same pronunciation with gao (height). People do so just to hope progress in everything they are engaged in. There is no fixed ways for the Double Ninth Cake, but super cakes will have as many as nine layers, looking like a tower.
Double Ninth cake is also known as flower cake, chrysanthemum cake and five color cake. There is no fixed method of making it. It falls into three classes: crude flower cake, fine flower cake, and gold ingot-like flower cake. Double Ninth cakes are made not only for families, but also as a gift for relatives and friends and a treat for married daughters coming home. We may as well make Double Ninth cakes ourselves this Double Ninth Festival. It is very fun. The recipe is as follows.
Major ingredients: flour
Other ingredients: red and green fine long shreds (200g for each), and glutinous rice wine (200g)
Condiments: Sweetened bean paste (300g), white sugar (500g) and lard (200g).
Recipe:
First, put the flour into a basin, add warm water and the glutinous rice wine, mix them, and let it ferment; when honeycomb-like things appear, add white sugar (200g) and mix it together with chopsticks.
Second, dilute the sweetened bean paste with hot water, melt white sugar (300g) with hot water, and mince the red and green fine long shreds.
Third, spread the lard at the bottom of a steamer, spread 1/3 of the flour paste prepared in the first procedure at the bottom of a steamer, brush the top of the flour paste with melted white sugar and diluted bean paste; spread another 1/3 of the flour paste on the first 1/3, brush the top of it with melted white sugar and diluted bean paste; and spread the last 1/3, cover the steamer and steam it. After it is steamed, brush it with melted white sugar, and scatter the red and green shreds on the top. After it is cooler, cut it into angular shapes, and the Double Ninth cakes are done.