Pineapple cakes in Taiwan are like fruit cakes in the West.
They’re both ostentatiously packaged and given as gifts.
And you rarely buy them to eat yourself,
let alone make them.
I went to this restaurant outside of Taipei
that specializes in a pineapple cake
known as fenglisu.
Calling it cake though is a bit of a misnomer.
Fenglisu is more like a tart made with a shortcake pastry dough.
The pastry allegedly has its origins in Taichung,
a city in the middle of Taiwan.
In Hokkien, it’s known as onglaiso,
which means good fortune and happiness.
This is why it’s often given as a gift.
But what really makes this restaurant’s cakes special
is the use of a local indigenous ingredient called maqaw.
Flour is combined with butter,
then powdered sugar,
powdered milk,
powdered cheese,
egg,
and lastly maqaw powder.
A pineapple filling is folded in
and it’s all put into a mold,
and then baked for 20 minutes.
Now, how did pineapple cake become a Taiwanese staple?
Pineapples were brought to Taiwan via South America
around 250 years ago,
and the industry flourished
during the Japanese colonial period in the 1900s.
By the 1970s, there was a surplus of pineapples.
The pineapple cake was born as an answer to that,
though these days, most fillings are made
with a combination of pineapple and winter melon.
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