Guilin White Sugar Cake

Guilin White Sugar Cake is the simplest and most popular traditional rice cake, made from rice and white sugar, with a soft, slightly chewy texture and sweet but not cloying taste. The process involves soaking rice, grinding it into rice milk, adding white sugar and a little yeast for fermentation. When the rice milk has fine bubbles, it's poured into round molds and steamed, with a layer of white sugar sprinkled on top. The steamed cake is milky white, slightly raised on top, full of small air holes like a fluffy sponge, with a slight 焦香 (jiāoxiāng, caramelized aroma) at the bottom. A bite releases rice fragrance mixed with sugar's sweetness, with a texture between cake and steamed sponge cake—soft with a hint of springiness. Its making is simple but requires good fermentation skills—under-fermentation makes it hard, over-fermentation makes it sour. Guilin's breakfast stalls often sell white sugar cake with soy milk, a childhood breakfast memory for many. Hot white sugar cake has a faint rice aroma and tastes good even when cold, an affordable delicacy found everywhere on the streets. Foreigners will enjoy its pure rice fragrance and sweetness, finding this pastry like a "Chinese sweet rice sponge cake"—simple but full of warm flavors.