Bakpia / Hopia

[Ellyn]

After I made a topic about moon cakes, I started to wonder about a similar, more ordinary sweet cake that I usually get at Chinese stores.

To my surprise, I found that this wasn't Chinese at all, but characteristically Southeast Asian. Even the ones with the same skin-like breading as moon cakes, are attributed to Japanese cuisine influence--although it's not generally from or even popular in regions that far north or east.

Usually, the dough is thin, pale (except where baked slightly golden), pliable and flaky. The filling is usually a paste, more prone to drying than moon cake paste, made out of sweet potatoes or mung bean. Another popular flavor is candied wintermelon with leek, bound together with pork fat. (This doesn't taste awful, but when it's advertised as a pork sweetcake then you'd kind of expect more pig parts when it seems that the pig parts aren't enough to really be the main ingredient.)

Although bite sized, or maybe two-bite sized, these can be filling and sticky and are never too sweet--unless you really dislike sweets.

 

[firelily99]

That sound delicious, I do like the idea of the thin dough rather something that would be heavier. I would love to be able to find something like that and just be able to sample it.

 

[Ellyn]

The dough is thin, but the filling is very... well, the filling is filling. If there's a Chinatown where you live, then they might be sold at many of the same places that moon cakes or haw flakes (hawthorne fruit preserves) are sold, even though these pia cakes not entirely Chinese.

If you can find some mung beans or sweet potatoes, I'm sure the recipe would be quite simple to make yourself or else it stands to reason that it wouldn't be so common where I live (although it's rare to find hopia that's consistently done really well, usually the breading isn't flaky enough or is too thick.)