[Photo: www.lyta.com.cn]

Just like peonies, the peony cake is related to China’s only female empress Wu Zetian, who was forced to be a nun at Chang’an Ganye Temple. She felt depressed and began to kill time by playing with flowers and using peony petals, beans and dates to make sweet cakes, which were very popular with other nuns at the temple. When she took power, she asked the royal cook to use fresh flowers to make peony cakes to treat major officials. Later, the peony cake recipe trickled from Luoyang to the rest of the country. It even spread to Japan in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).

The peony cake broke the tradition of using flour in cake-making and was the first to replace the ingredient with beans. It’s rich in protein, phosphor, calcium, potassium, vitamin E and linoleic acid, which can break down sugar and fat in the human body, boost metabolism, reduce cholesterol and slow the aging process. At the same time, the cake is soft and sticky and an ideal healthy snack.