Taiwan's Pastry Culture

30-second overview: Lukang's Yuzhenzhai opened in 1877 during the Qing Guangxu era at the intersection of Minzu Road and Zhongshan Road, co-founded by Huang Jin and Zheng Chui, and five generations later still sells fengyan gao and mung bean cakes¹. The malt cake from Shengang's Kunpai Bakery was improved by apprentice Wei Ching-hai and renamed the sun cake². Fengyuan Baquan's third-generation Chen Tseng-hsiung developed the egg yolk pastry in the 1980s, originally olive-shaped with pineapple crust³. The thousand-layer craft of oil-skin-wrapping-oil-flake, in the 2020s, supported San Tung Han Confectionery's daily sales of 400,000 lava custard pastries, Kuo Yuan Ye's collaboration with designer Nieh Yung-chen on "Companion Moments," and Old Chin Nan's 2026 cross-industry venture into "Han Pastry Gelato"⁴. At the foot of Bagua Mountain, SunnyHills in 2009 used native pineapples at NT$5 per catty to cultivate 270 hectares under contract⁵. Lukang native Chen Yao-hsun won the Mondial du Pain world bread championship in 2017⁶, and his red-soil egg yolk pastries once sold out in under 30 seconds⁷. In 150 years, countless faces have changed, but the layers of filling have largely remained the same.

1877: That Qing Guangxu-Era Attic Floor

On the second floor of No. 168, Minzu Road, Lukang, there is an attic floor from the Qing Guangxu era. On the floor sits a wooden table, and on the table rests a piece of mung bean cake. This pastry's recipe is the product of 148 years of refinement by five generations of Yuzhenzhai.

You know, this Yuzhenzhai building is no ordinary old house. Its predecessor was the site of "Chuanheli," the largest ship-head firm in Qing-era Lukang, and you can still see the original skylight and wooden attic⁸. In 1877 (the third year of Qing Guangxu), Lukang merchant Huang Jin, a lover of poetry, often entertained literati with tea and pastries. Zheng Chui crossed the sea to Taiwan bringing a lifetime of pastry skills and partnered with Huang Jin to establish "Yuzhenzhai" bakery¹. Later the two split; Zheng Chui opened "Zheng Yuzhen Bakery" next door, so to this day two century-old bakeries with the "Yu" character coexist on Lukang's Zhongshan Road.

Fengyan gao is pressed from cake flour into delicate threads that slowly dissolve in the mouth — the tea accompaniment of choice during the comings and goings of Lukang's eight suburban merchant guilds in the Qing era. Lukang's geography determined its sweetness. In the late 18th century, "First Tainan, Second Lukang, Third Mengjia" — Lukang was a key transshipment hub for sugar imports from Quanzhou, Xiamen, and Fuzhou; sugar prices were lower than elsewhere, and pastries naturally flourished⁸. Yuzhenzhai is merely one of the shops on this Han pastry street that has survived to the present.

By the third generation, the shop's gift boxes entered the wedding market. Lukang people emphasize the six rites and twelve gifts; the wedding pastry box is the tangible object announcing the alliance of two families. A box of large pastries delivered to the bride's family, and the whole alley knows a daughter is being married off.

The fifth generation still works in that century-old attic. The recipe hasn't changed; the ratio of sugar to maltose hasn't changed; the shop still provides pig, chicken, and fish three-sacrifice wooden molds for tourists' DIY experience¹.

That Malt Cake on Shengang Street

A bit south, Taichung's Shengang. During the Japanese era there was a pastry street here, the most famous being the "Kunpai Bakery" opened by the Lin Chen-fang family, specializing in malt cakes². Maltose boiled to a thick, caramelized fragrance, wrapped in flaky pastry — the traditional snack for Shengang weddings, festivals, and temple fairs.

Kunpai Bakery had an apprentice named Wei Ching-hai, known as "Master Ming." He learned the traditional malt cake method at Kunpai and began thinking how to improve it — make the oil skin flakier, adjust the maltose filling's sweetness to be less cloying, shape it rounder and smaller so one person could finish a piece in one sitting.

After improvement, he named this cake "Sun Cake."

The name "Sun Cake" spread in the 1950s. Back then, a whole street beside Taichung Station was full of sun cake shops; travelers bought them as gifts to take north and south, and the four characters "Taichung specialty" became bound to the sun cake².

Master Ming never applied for a trademark. Later sun cake became a generic item any Taichung bakery could make. Some say this was Master Ming's regret; others say it was precisely because he didn't lock down the recipe that sun cake became Taichung's true collective memory.

The Squaring of the Great Pineapple Cake

Jump north. Between Taipei and Taichung during the Japanese era was a "Yifutang Confectionery," owned by Chen Chou-tsai. At the time Taiwan's pineapple cultivation industry was booming; pineapples were exported to the Japanese home islands. Chen Chou-tsai simmered pineapple flesh into jam, wrapped it in the traditional round "great pineapple cake," and it became the favorite dessert of Japanese gentlemen⁹.

This great pineapple cake is the prototype of the pineapple cake.

The person who truly turned the pineapple cake into the square bite-sized pastry we know today was another pastry craftsman Yen Shu-mu. He did two things: shrank the round great cake into a square (palm-sized, easy to share), and replaced the traditional great cake's crust with a butter-based cookie crust⁹. The filling still retained pineapple-winter melon jam. This pineapple-plus-winter-melon combination is crucial — pure pineapple jam is too tart; winter melon's clean sweetness harmonizes with pineapple's acidity, creating the "balanced sweet-tart" that defines today's pineapple cake¹⁰.

From round great cake to square bite-sized pastry was a redefinition of "the weight of a gift." The old wedding great cakes emphasized the grandeur of "one cake feeds a whole family"; the square pineapple cake is "one person, one bite" individualization. Later generations would discover that this squaring logic foreshadowed the entire Taiwan pastry industry's pivot in the gift box market.

The Olive-Shaped Early Experiments

Time jumps to the 1980s. Fengyuan Baquan's third-generation Chen Tseng-hsiung was taking over the shop from his father, a bakery selling pastries since the Japanese era¹¹.

Baquan's story spans Taiwan and Japan. In the Japanese era, first-generation Chen Yun sold pastries on Triangle Street in Fengyuan; in 1943, second-generation Chen Chin-chuan opened "Baquan Seika Honpo" in Tokyo; in 1975, Chen Tseng-hsiung returned to Fengyuan to establish "Taiwan Baquan Head Store," blending Japanese Western confectionery techniques with traditional Taiwanese Han pastries¹¹.

His first experiment was "small mooncakes" — shrinking traditional large mooncakes to a size one person could finish in one sitting, using Japanese-imported white adzuki beans for filling. But what truly changed Taiwan's Mid-Autumn gift box map was another pastry: the egg yolk pastry.

The August 1986 Bakery Food Information Magazine records Chen Tseng-hsiung as the inventor of the egg yolk pastry¹². National Treasure Master Lu Hung-yu recalls the origin around the 1960s: the earliest version was olive-shaped, not spherical; after baking it would be halved to reveal the salted egg yolk inside, and the crust was pineapple crust, not oil-flake pastry¹³. Only later did it slowly evolve into today's recognized spherical + oil-flake version.

Chen Tseng-hsiung's three key craft adjustments: salted egg yolk pre-treatment must soak in strong liquor to remove fishiness then bake at medium temperature; black bean paste must be slow-simmered over low heat for a smoky flavor; the flour-to-oil ratio of the oil-flake pastry must be precisely calibrated¹³. These three recipe parameters remain in use today.

Fourth-generation Chen Kun-hung studied in Japan, bringing back the precision of Japanese wagashi. In 2013 Baquan renamed to "Chen Yun Baquan," adding the first-generation Chen Yun's name to the signboard — a rare reverse move for a century-old family enterprise; usually the founder's name fades, but this house retrieved it¹¹.

The Craft Breakthrough of Oil-Skin-Wrapping-Oil-Flake

To understand why 2020s Taiwan pastries can cross over into lava custard pastries, collaborate with designers on cute-shaped mung bean cakes, even create "Han Pastry Italian Gelato," one must first deconstruct the most core craft characteristic of Han pastries: oil-skin-wrapping-oil-flake.

Han pastry flaky crust relies not on leavening agents or chemical additives, but on physical lamination. The master first kneads medium-gluten flour, water, and fat into a tough, elastic "oil skin," then mixes low-gluten flour and fat into a loose "oil flake." Then the oil skin wraps the oil flake, repeatedly folding and rolling — between every layer of oil skin lies a thin layer of oil flake. During high-temperature baking, moisture in the oil skin vaporizes into steam, pushing the dough layers apart, and hundreds of thousands of delicate layers emerge¹⁴.

This structure has extraordinary load-bearing capacity. It can envelop moist mung bean paste, glistening braised pork, hold the layers of salted egg yolk and black bean paste, even envelop the most difficult element in modern pastry: "liquid lava custard." The problem with traditional Western lava custard pastries is the liquid filling seeps into the crust causing sogginess, but Taiwan masters utilize the thousand-layer characteristic to create a natural barrier — locking in the filling's moisture and fat while maintaining the shell's crispness.

San Tung Han Confectionery is the representative case of this craft lineage. This 40-year-old Han pastry shop, during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, saw single-store daily revenue drop to NT$2,000. Marketing director Chou Shih-ya (known in the industry as "Boss Lady Fei-fei") led the team through a thorough digital transformation: developing longer-shelf-life products, building a brand website via SHOPLINE, laying out e-commerce platforms¹⁵. Their lava custard pastries set a record of averaging one box sold every 17 seconds, single-day peak sales of 400,000 pieces, earning over NT$100 million in three years¹⁵.

Kuo Yuan Ye takes another route. Fifth-generation Kuo Chien-wei entered the family business in 2009, designated successor in 2016¹⁶. He studied in Japan for nearly three years, visiting century-old wagashi shops. Upon return, he shifted strategy from "occupying three-quarters of the wedding cake market" toward festival and gift boxes, shrinking and refining the giant mung bean cakes. His collaboration with designer Nieh Yung-chen on "Companion Moments" mung bean cakes broke the limits of single-sided molding and single flavors; another series shaped mung bean cakes into Taiwan landmarks like the Blue Magpie and Longshan Temple¹⁷. "We are not just a Han pastry shop" is a phrase he has said in multiple interviews¹⁶.

Old Chin Nan walks a third path: cultural education. Founded in 1890, this Kaohsiung century-old bakery established the "Han Pastry Culture Museum" in Daliao in 2016 — a 4,421-square-meter, three-story building housing corporate headquarters, brand story museum, pastry kitchen, and baking culture experience space⁴. Chairman Li Hsiung-ching promotes food education, inviting students from remote Kaohsiung districts to visit and experience, covering 8 districts, 26 schools, nearly 600 students.

In April 2026, Old Chin Nan launched an even bolder crossover — Taiwan's first "Han Pastry Italian Gelato" (Han Pastry Gelato), translating classic Han pastry flavors like pineapple cake and mung bean cake into Italian gelato: 4 regular flavors (Pineapple Harmony, Mung Bean Classic, Berry Splendor, Tea Flower Fragrance) + 2 seasonal limited editions, debuting at Taichung's Hanshin Arena Shopping Plaza, second phase planned for Taipei's Far Eastern Garden City (SOGO Dome)¹⁸. Simultaneously launched a 20-store expansion plan across Taiwan¹⁹.

The oil-skin-wrapping-oil-flake craft, continuing from the Qing era to 2026 — it can support a 5-centimeter lava custard pastry, a designer-collaborated mung bean cake, a stick of Italian gelato. The most stubborn traditional method is often the most elegant solution to contemporary problems.

The Tea-Offering Ritual at Bagua Mountain

Cross to Nantou. In 2009, former Chuan Ding Technology founder Hsu Ming-jen, to help his family transition into agribusiness, together with his brother Hsu Sheng-ming, Lan Sha-chung, and Lan Hung-jen, invested NT$80 million capital to establish "SunnyHills"⁵.

Their consultant Hsieh Chen-shun named it "SunnyHills" (微熱) — referring to the faint warmth radiating from the earth at the foot of Bagua Mountain at dusk, and the warm but reserved hospitality of the mountain people. Hsieh Chen-shun overruled objections and suggested using the locally abundant pineapples for pineapple cake, but with a different "native pineapple" (colloquially "tut-mu-a," the Kaicheng No. 2 and No. 3 varieties). Native pineapple has acidity and fruit fragrance; they insisted on using only maltose to adjust sweetness, leaving acidity to vary naturally with the seasons without adjustment⁵.

This choice made SunnyHills an outlier in Taiwan's pastry circle. At the time, mainstream market pineapple cakes all used high-sweetness, fine-fiber Golden Diamond pineapples (edible variety); native pineapple was too tart with coarse fiber, considered unsuitable for filling. SunnyHills' bet was: return to the acidity pineapple originally should have.

The tea-offering ritual at the Nantou sanheyuan entrance is this brand's most recognizable scene. Every guest entering the sanheyuan receives a cup of hot tea + a piece of pineapple cake to taste, already eaten before checkout. This ritual has continued from 2009 to today, a rare "taste before you buy" operation in Taiwan pastry shops.

The more tangible impact is agricultural. SunnyHills heated up native pineapple prices, from initially under NT$5 per catty to contract price of NT$10 per catty, contract area reaching 270 hectares, employing 210 local workers⁵. This figure is not small in Taiwan agribusiness — equivalent to pulling a native variety that seemed destined to disappear back into the mainstream market.

The 30-Second Sellout Mid-Autumn Battle

Time arrives at 2017. A Lukang native named Chen Yao-hsun won the Mondial du Pain world bread championship in France⁶.

After ending his stint at "Paris Bopo" in Kaohsiung, he opened his personal baking brand "Chen Yao-hsun Bakery YOSHI BAKERY" in Taipei⁶²⁰. Later he combined his world-champion European bread techniques with Taiwan's traditional Han pastry salted egg yolk flaky crust, developing a Mid-Autumn gift box called "Red Soil Salted Egg Yolk Pastry"²¹.

Red-soil-cured salted egg yolk + reduced-sugar bean paste + Danish champion butter.

This combination catapulted Chen Yao-hsun to the "Hermès of the egg yolk pastry world" in its first year — sold out in under 30 seconds²¹. Netizens said it was harder to get than concert tickets. The 2025 Mid-Autumn pre-order, like before, was placed on the ERA Ticketing system (the same system selling Mayday and Jay Chou concerts), opened July 29 at 12:30 PM, limit 8 boxes per person, NT$900, no delivery, must pick up in store²⁰.

This is a brand-new generation's Mid-Autumn battle format. Traditional old bakeries compete on recipe, gift box design, channels; the new generation adds ticketing systems, world bread champions, social media hype — three new battlefields.

Same generation as Chen Yao-hsun: Dajia Master Tsung's taro pastry (state banquet designated snack), Lukang Yuzhenzhai's fengyan gao, Fengyuan Chen Yun Baquan's small mooncakes, SunnyHills' pineapple cakes, Old Chin Nan's Han Pastry Gelato²². These century-old shops, emerging craftsmen, cultural education route, crossover gelato — four pastries representing four era postures, every Mid-Autumn dialoguing on the same table.

The Layers of Filling Have Largely Not Changed

From the Lukang ship-head firm's second floor to the ERA Ticketing system's 30 seconds, Taiwan pastries have changed countless faces in 150 years. But the layers of filling have largely not changed: salted egg yolk still must soak in strong liquor to remove fishiness, maltose still must be slow-simmered over low heat, native pineapple still must wait until it ripens in the field and naturally returns to acidity, the thousand-layer structure of oil-skin-wrapping-oil-flake still must be repeatedly folded and rolled out by the master on the pastry board.

World bread champion and century-old Han pastry shop now stand at the same Mid-Autumn table. No one replaces anyone. A gift box might contain Yuzhenzhai's fengyan gao, Master Tsung's taro pastry, SunnyHills' pineapple cake, Chen Yao-hsun's red soil egg yolk pastry, Old Chin Nan's Han Pastry Gelato melting beside them — five pastries representing five eras, all treated as objects of the shared festival "Mid-Autumn."

Next time you hold a piece of egg yolk pastry, take a bite and think: where did the salted egg yolk come from, how many layers was the oil flake folded, how long was the black bean paste slow-simmered, this craft passed from the Qing-era Lukang attic to the 2026 ERA Ticketing system's purchase anxiety — how many generations of masters' pastry boards has it passed through?

A single cake contains far more time than you imagine.

Further Reading

• Sun Cake — The deep history of a single item: Taichung Shengang Master Ming Wei Ching-hai's improvement from Kunpai Bakery's malt cake
• Pineapple Cake — Eighty-year evolutionary path from Yifutang's great pineapple cake in the Japanese era to the squaring revolution
• Taiwan Bread and Baking — From Wu Pao-chun to Chen Yao-hsun, the story of Taiwan's bakers stepping onto the world stage
• Taiwan Rice Food Culture — Rice and pastries are two main lines on the same table; understanding rice is key to understanding pastry's place
• Taiwan Weddings, Funerals, Celebrations and Life Rituals — The concrete role of wedding pastry boxes in the six rites and twelve gifts
• Taiwan Tea Culture — Han pastries and tea are a century-old pairing; Yuzhenzhai's fengyan gao was originally eaten with tea

References