Hang Heung Cake Shop and its White Lotus Paste

Yuen Long is easily one of Hong Kong’s best food havens. Castle Peak Road, known to locals as “the big road” in Yuen Long, itself presents myriad choices for street food, proper restaurants, historic dining, grocer establishments and tea shops. Be guided by the aroma of traditional Cantonese pastries, and you will find Hang Heung Cake Shop along the Castle Peak Road.

About Hang Heung Cake Shop

Opened in 1920, Hang Heung Cake Shop is one of the longest-standing traditional pastry shops in Hong Kong. By now, it has well exceeded one hundred years of history. Its first chapter began as Hang Heung Chan, which was a Cantonese restaurant. In the 1940s, it changed its name into Hang Heung Restaurant. Its current brand as a Chinese pastry shop took off in the 1970s.

At the height of Hang Heung Cake Shop’s popularity in the 1980s, it produced about 25,000 pieces of pastries per day. During those times, when Mid-Autumn Festival was around the corner, Hang Heung hired one hundred cooks to wok fry the lotus paste (more below) throughout the day. Finally, even today the pastries must be hand-made. Machine-made pastries simply does not turn out soft and flaky.

Indeed, even to this very day, the cake shop’s large selection of traditional Cantonese pastries are produced locally and daily in its bakery in Yuen Long. Yuen Long is the home to Hang Heung Cake Shop, and it has been so for a century.

Currently, the CEO of Hang Heung Cake Shop Desmond is the second generation

The Lotus Paste

The restaurant prides itself in being the originator of the white lotus paste. However, it certainly is not the first bakery that produced the lotus paste. The Lin Heung Tea House in Guangzhou had long produced lotus paste since the Qing Dynasty, which then became the standard ingredient for mooncakes for the Mid Autumn Festival. Lin Heung Tea House had also established a sister restaurant in Hong Kong during the 1930s.

As to the difference between the original yellow lotus paste and Hang Heung’s white lotus paste, it has to do with an additional procedure during the paste making.

Lotus paste is made from lotus seeds. Lotus seeds have this protective membrane (in Cantonese, it is called the “seeds’ clothes”) that is somewhat red in color. When the lotus paste is ground with the membrane, it will turn out to have a golden yellow color. The white lotus paste is lotus paste made without this membrane of the seeds. The paste thus turns out to have a pale, white color. The white lotus paste is not as sweet, and the flavors are more tamed.

Because the white lotus paste does not contain the seed membrane, its making involves an additional procedure of removing it. For all lotus paste making, the seeds have to be repeatedly washed and soaked for a long time. After soaking, the membrane has to be removed. Then the lotus seeds are cooked in boiling water. After grinding it into a paste, it is fried with peanut oil. The very last step is adding white sugar into the paste.

The lotus seeds that Hang Heung uses for its white lotus paste is the Xiang Lotus. There are three main kinds of lotus in China. The Xiang Lotus refers to those that grow in Hunan Province. The other two kinds of lotus grow in Fujian and Zhejiang. The Xiangtan County of Hunan is the home of Xiang Lotus.

The popularity of white lotus paste rose during the 1960s or so. Since then, at least in Hong Kong, white lotus paste became the ingredient of choice for mooncakes. By now, we can safely say that the yellow lotus paste has been phased out.

Chinese Pastries

When people visit Yuen Long, they may ask any local there and they will tell you the souvenir to get is Lo Por Bang, which literally means “wife cake.” Hang Heung’s signature lo por bang comes in delightful pockets of winter melon paste and they are uniquely Hong Kong.

Other well known pastries at Hang Heung are thousand year old egg puffs, egg rolls, sesame and walnut puffs, and very importantly, wedding confectionary. Perhaps one general feature that is unique to all these traditional pastries is the flaky puffs. They are dry and soft, and goes perfectly with the moist filling.

Finally, a word on the business now. Currently, the company is managed by CEO Desmond Wong, who is actually not a member of Hang Heung’s family. Since he took the helm in 2017, he has taken on the heritage angle of the business. He has the vision of promoting the brand as a tradition and a shared heritage of Hong Kong. Not long ago, he also opened Hang Heung Bakery Cafe, which is located in Sheung Wan. It also serves all kinds of traditional pastries for which Hang Heung is known.

Sources

Descriptions on the company website of Hang Heung Cake Shop.

The Wikipedia on Xianglian (Xiang Lotus).

HOY x I Cable, BabyJohn Interviews Hang Heung Cake Shop and Desmond Wong, available at Youtube.com.