The Art of Chinese Baking:

Traditional, Modern, and Reimagined

華夏的烘培藝術

Coming to you from W. W. Norton in early fall 2025

This book is a fond look back at a representative handful of the countless traditional breads, cakes, and pastries my husband and I have enjoyed over the past decades in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and North America, as well as more modern reiterations of these classics, and even a few of my own playful variations on old-fashioned themes.

I moved to Taipei in 1976, allegedly to study the language. I say allegedly because what happened next made me a firm believer in fate, in kismet, in the blessings of the food gods: I happened to arrive just as the city was on the verge of a gastronomic blossoming.

Culinary traditions from every corner of China suddenly flourished on this island province and turned Taipei into the one place in the world where you could enjoy everything from the street snacks of Xi’an and Chongqing to the most elevated hautes cuisines of the Huai Yang region and Guangzhou, stories about which I have recounted in both my big cookbook, All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China, as well as in At the Chinese Table: A Memoir with Recipes.

The Art of Chinese Baking is the natural next step in what has turned out to be a lifelong exploration of China’s extraordinary cuisines.

I initially thought that whittling my subject down this time around to just baked goods would make for an easy project I could effortlessly research and assemble during the covid shutdown, for how challenging could it be to write about China’s cookies, puff pastry, breads, and cakes?

Three years later, and I am still trying to wrap my mind around the immensity of even this single corner of the world’s most wide-ranging and ancient continuous food culture.

This is the first book to ever take China's baking and pastries seriously, and that includes works published in China.

Each chapter traces the subject (such as filled cookies or cakes) from earliest examples through modern iterations and ends with my own interpretations on the subject.

This book will include about 200 recipes, including ways to make your own salted egg yolks, a variety of fillings, and four (yes, four!) different kinds of puff pastry.

Even though English-language Chinese cookbooks are published every year, few Westerners have ever read about China’s baked goods, much less sampled the Consort Guifei’s crumbly coconut cookies, Taiwan’s marshmallowy chiffon cakes, the Hui people’s tandoor breads, the snowflake-like texture of a perfect Double Ninth cake, and imperial tea snacks that please the eye and the nose as much as the tongue.

  • Modern techniques and equipment are used whenever possible

  • Measurements are given in both metric and by volume (with metric being the standard)

  • Techniques are illustrated with line drawings

  • Instructions are given on how to locate and use unique ingredients like maltose

  • Deep dives are taken on a slew of subjects, such as the history of sugar in China and how pastries are used to celebrate the nation's many lovely holidays.

All of the recipes are being tested and retested by lovely people here in North America, as well as other countries, in the hopes that this book can be used by just about anyone, anywhere.

Sample recipes

Fried Taro Sandwich Cookies

Xiāngsū yùbǐng 香酥芋餅

Makes 24

Except for a few popcorn chicken hawkers here and there, these cookies seem to have disappeared from Taipei’s night markets. However, just a mention of them in a treasured old Taiwanese cookbook stirred up so many wonderful memories that I had to include them. I

tried to figure out where they came from, since these are basically sweetened taro paste slathered between two Ritz crackers and deep-fried, but no one knows for sure. The crackers themselves suggest that they might have been slipped out of the American PXs on U.S. bases back in the 70s, much around the same time that powdered milk and processed cheese started to influence the local pastries. Nothing else makes much sense.

All I know for certain is that these are ridiculously good.

These would be right at home at a county fair alongside things like deep-fried pickles and Snickers bars, but let me guarantee you that these cookies are about a million times better.

Chopped candied kumquats are often added to the taro to lend a spark of interest to the creamy, milky taro filling, but to make life easier—and these cookies more accessible—I’ve found that a hint of marmalade makes an admirable substitute.

Your crackers will probably already be salted, but if they are not, consider sprinkling a little flaked salt on the cookies as soon as they emerge from the fryer.

400g | 1¼ cups steamed, well-mashed mashed taro

80g | ½ cup orange marmalade

6 tablespoons unsalted cultured butter, softened

80g | ½ cup powdered milk or powdered buttermilk

48 Ritz crackers, or something similar

 

2 tablespoons cool water

2 tablespoons cornstarch

fresh frying oil

flaked salt, like Maldon, optional

 

1  Place the mashed taro in a medium work bowl. Mix the marmalade, butter, and powdered milk thoroughly into the taro. Divide the filling evenly into 24 pieces (28g) and roll these into balls.

 

2  Set half of the crackers with their tops upside-down on a work surface. Center a ball of filling on top each one and cover with the rest of the crackers to form little sandwiches. Gently squish the crackers onto the filling and then smooth the sides to turn them into solid cylinders.

 

3 Heat about 5cm | 2-inches fresh oil in a wok or pan and set it over medium heat. Set a cooling rack on a baking sheet lined with paper towels. Stir the water into the cornstarch to form a slurry.

 

4 When a wooden chopstick dipped into the hot oil is immediately covered with bubbles, use these chopsticks to dip the cookie sandwiches one at a time into the cornstarch slurry, stirring the slurry as needed to keep it from settling. Shake off any extra slurry and slide a few of the cookies into the hot oil. Turn the cookies over when their bottoms are golden brown, and then fry the other side.

 

5 Remove the fried cookies to the cooling rack, sprinkle with the optional flaked salt while they are still hot, and repeat with the rest of the cookies and slurry until all have been cooked. Keep the cookies covered with foil in a 120ºC | 250ºF oven until ready to serve, as these are delicious hot. However, they can also be cooled and refrigerated in a sealed plastic bag, then served at room temperature or even chilled, when they will still taste amazing.

Sweet and Savory Rice Nut Crunchies

Chăomǐbǐng 炒米餅

Makes about 32

 

A traditional Cantonese recipe like this is way too good to be enjoyed on only one side of the Pacific. Like so many of my favorite old-fashioned treats from South China, these balance savory against sweet.

The only real problem with these—aside from their strange ability to disappear—is what to call them in English. Cookies? Crackers? I bit into one to find inspiration. The resounding crunch provided me with an easy answer.

Use a shallow Chinese cookie mold for this, which you can find in either beautiful carved wooden slats or as more modern molded plastic, as this will provide you with the correct depth needed to achieve maximum crispness.

400g | 2⅔ cups regular (not glutinous/sweet/sticky) rice flour

150g | 1 cup skinned toasted peanuts

35g | ½ cup toasted sesame seeds

180g | 1½ cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

125ml | ½ cup shallot oil or green onion oil

45ml | 3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

 

Special equipment

Chinese (5cm | 2-inch) cookie mold

pastry brush with stiff bristles

 

1  Place the rice flour in a microwaveable bowl and microwave at 70 percent power for a few minutes (stirring every 30 seconds) until you can no longer detect a raw taste. Set aside about 2 tablespoons of this toasted flour to dust the insides of your cookie molds, and then scrape the rest into a food processor. Pulse in the peanuts, sesame seeds, powdered sugar, and salt, and reduce these to a coarse sand. Pulse in the shallot oil and toasted sesame oil along with about 90ml | 6 tablespoons ice water to form a sandy dough that barely clumps together when you squeeze it.

 

2  Set two racks near the center of your oven and preheat it to 160ºC | 325ºF. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper. Dust the inside of your cookie mold with the toasted rice flour before patting the dough firmly inside it (see Diagram K on page 000) so that you get a clear pattern when the cookie is unmolded. Dust the molds with the reserved toasted rice flour before you shape more cookies, as this will help prevent the dough from sticking; use a pastry brush with stiff bristles to clean out the molds as needed.

 

3  Bake the cookies for 15 minutes, then turn off the heat without opening the door and let the crunchies stay in the oven for another 5 minutes to dry out a bit more. Remove the sheets from the oven and let the cookies cool and harden for 5 minutes or so before removing them to a rack to cool off completely.