Hong Kong Hang Heung Pastries - Pistachio Wife Cake, Century Egg Cake, Hazelnut Cocoa Cake, Black Sesame Paste Cake, Lava Custard Cake & Mung Bean Paste Cake

I recently secured a haul of less common flavours of Chinese pastries from Hong Kong Hang Heung, which is known for premium quality Chinese pastries and also for being quite adventurous in the types of flavours it produces. This time around, the declared new flavour is the Hazelnut Cocoa Cake, but Pistachio Wife Cake is also relatively non-traditional and trending. The other flavours I tried were Century Egg Cake, Black Sesame Paste Cake, Lava Custard Cake and the traditional Mung Bean Paste Cake.

Before I review the individual flavours, first, I will describe the pastry, which was similar across all the pastries. 

The pastry was very light, fine and smooth, crumbly in texture, like a very soft buttery pastry, yet it had no butter, but rather this is probably achieved by the perfect balance of pork lard. Despite the use of lard, it was not greasy at all and had none of the waxiness or pastey texture of poorly applied lard. It retained a refined slightly sandy crisp or mild firmness to the bite, which I wouldn't quite call a crunch, but there was a good bite and it was not soggy at all. It is almost like the crust of a refined pineapple tart in texture, except that most of those have butter. This texture is in contrast to a lot of other regular Chinese mung bean cakes which have a rather coarse or hard crust that is unevenly crunchy or else soggy.

The taste of the pastry came across like a very neutral, natural crisp and clean wheat taste with no butter, and did not seem salty nor sweet. There was no lard or oily taste either. This is quite unusual, as I usually notice some level of sweetness or saltiness in most pastries. So it seems to play the perfect role of providing all texture and wheat, and nothing else.

Mung Bean Paste Cake (mung bean Chinese pastry)

I started with the most traditional flavour to get my bearings. It is the one on the right in the photo above, which is slightly shorter in height than the other one (which is the Century Egg Cake).

It was possibly one of the most refined mung bean pastries I've had, comparable with the 5-star hotel-level mooncakes. 

Besides the refined pastry as described, the mung bean filling itself was also very exquisitely flavoured. There was a very nice balance between all 3 main flavours: sweet, salty and a hint of shallot oil fragrance. I did not notice any pepper fragrance or notes. As a result, it was overall very mellow and pleasant, like comfort food. This is in contrast to other mung bean cakes which swing richly savoury, hearty or even peppery, or else the other similar category might be mooncakes which are too heavy to be called comfort food. 

For the filling texture, it is to the right in the photo below.

Century Egg Cake (century egg Chinese pastry)

The Century Egg Cake is to the left of the Mung Bean Cake. It is taller than the mung bean cake, presumably to house the extra filling of the century egg in the middle.

Unlike the mung bean cake, the pale yellow filling, surrounding the mottled dark century egg filling in the middle, seems to be lotus paste instead of mung bean. It was like a richly flavoured and smooth white lotus paste of high-end hotel mooncakes, but the pastry was the crumbly Chinese cake pastry. 

The lotus paste's rich nutty, buttery and woody notes dominated and filled my palate. The century egg filling seemed to enhance the lotus paste, making it fuller with more umami and woody notes, and also broadening and deepening the taste with earthy notes and a hint of ammonia and sulfur. It was quite mild and not so pungent, however, just a flavour on the edges of the palate. So if you don't like strong century egg flavours but don't mind it in a mild form, you should be all right with this.

Despite the umami profile, the overall effect leaned sweet rather than savoury, like a mooncake.

Overall, it is much richer and more complex than the usual lotus paste, and the pairing with lotus paste is quite ingenious indeed. They really should have lotus mooncakes with century egg filling. But if you don't like the unusual flavour profile of the century egg, then you might not like this.

Lava Custard Cake (lava custard Chinese pastry)

This was another smooth and rich rendition of a popular flavour. 

It was quite intensely flavoured compared to the first two pastries, with a strong creamy, rich and umami fillling that envelops the entire palate. There was a rich milky custard flavour from the outer layer of milk custard, which is similar to the fillings in Hong Kong lava custard mooncakes. It reminded me of the milkiness of rabbit sweet or sweetened milk sold in cans such as the Wang Wang sweet milk. Interestingly, there were notes of melon like in Yakult or cultured-milk flavoured frozen yogurts that lean a bit medicinal (not the Greek yogurt taste). So I'm not sure if they used some cheese powder or yoghurt powder that contributed those notes, as some cheeses also have such flavours. 

The lava yolk in the middle was smooth and buttery, with no noticeable sulphur taste or greasy mouthfeel. If you dislike the sulphuric aspects of the eggy taste, you just might be fine with this version.

Hazelnut Cocoa Cake (hazelnut cocoa Chinese pastry)

This was quite surprising because it turned out to be like an American fudge brownie or fudgy chocolate soft baked cookie - very intense in the cocoa with a fully bloomed cocoa flavour that usually comes with the combination of cocoa with fats such as cocoa butter or butter, leaving that dense, rich and velvety feeling in the palate. 

But the super interesting thing is that it was not nearly as cloyingly sweet, like the overpoweringly sweet American fudge brownies that make you feel diabetic from the first bite. For this cake, the overpowering intensity of it seems to come from the way the cocoa flavour itself is brought out instead of sugar. I suppose they probably added some salt too which further enhanced this intense feeling of richness.

Over that layer of richness, there was also a very nice fragrance of the cocoa, with a rich earthy and nutty body.

There was also an occasional bit of citrus peel, probably orange, that I bit into, which introduced a pop of bright and zesty flavour, cutting through the dense cocoa in a very refreshing way. This was such a great idea.

As you can see from the filling texture, there were two textures - a more fudgy and melty core and a more pastey, powdery exterior. I couldn't distinguish them once it was inside my mouth, but I think they might have used some kind of bean paste for the outer layer to even out the super dense cocoa flavours while retaining a grounded and earthy body, making it less cloying or overpowering compared to the standard American fudge brownie.

Overall, if I feel like having an intense chocolate fix without the shock of an overly saccharine brownie, this a much smoother, milder and more soothing snack I would get instead.

Pistachio Wife Cake (pistachio Chinese pastry)

This was another pleasantly surprising flavour. I was expecting some almond-, marzipan- or pandan-like notes like how Chinese pistachio pastes might taste. 

But this pistachio paste filling ended up being a uniquely even balance between all the complex aspects of pistachio, with equal levels of nutty, woody, vegetal umami, beany and earthy flavours. There was a touch of vanilla-esque pandan notes. As a result of the strong presence of woody, earthy and vegetal umami notes, it was a lot more natural than those detached pistachio flavours that swing towards the almond, cherry or pandan notes. So I really liked this very full and well-rounded pistachio flavour. 

I think the natural aspects are also reflected in the relatively natural colour which balances green with brown and yellow tones, instead of the artificially pure green shades used in some pistachio desserts.

It leaned a bit sweeter and savoury, unlike other pistachio desserts that are also prominently savoury. Perhaps this is why it is called a wife cake, which is supposed to be sweet whereas the husband cake is savoury. But it was not too sweet and very decent in the overall sweet-salty balance. It would be nice if they tried to make a savoury version as a pistachio husband cake, since pistachio does very well as a savoury flavour.

The filling texture was similar to a wife cake filling - somewhat stretchy and a tad starchy, but somewhat softer and slightly fudgy. 

Black Sesame Paste Cake (black sesame paste Chinese pastry)

Based on how dark the jet-black filling was, I had expected an intensely earthy and fragrant sesame taste, but this filling turned out to be more like a base of normal wife cake filling with a moderately intense black sesame flavour. The sesame flavour leaned earthy with a mild but distinct sesame fragrance. 

So it is lighter than those thick and pure oil-based sesame fillings like you might find in high quality mooncakes. As such, you could probably enjoy an entire piece in 1 sitting, unlike mooncakes where one might only be able to enjoy a quarter before feeling the heaviness.

It was a tad too sweet for me because it felt like the sweetness poked through and took up more space than the sesame flavour, but in terms of the overall sweetness it was not bad.

That said, this was my least liked cake out of all 6 that I tried.

This photo below shows how the pistachio wife cake and black sesame paste cake have a wife cake-like filling texture whereby they kind of stretch and flop in a slightly starchy way. (See the dark shadows on the pastry layer under the fillings, which show how they overhang or flop over after stretching.)

Verdict

These flavours vary greatly in intensity, so I would suggest trying them from least intense first, in this order: Mung Bean Cake (start here), Century Egg Cake, Pistachio Wife Cake, Black Sesame Paste Cake, Lava Custard Cake and finally the Hazelnut Cocoa Cake.

My favourite ones were probably the classic Mung Bean Cake because of how smooth and perfect the balance was, followed by the Pistachio Wife Cake for how well balanced and natural the pistachio flavour was, and the Century Egg Cake for the unique enhancement to the lotus paste, which I find otherwise quite boring. 

The rest of the flavours are relatively well-executed but otherwise quite common in my opinion and there are many other good alternatives around.

Pistachio Sea Salt Cookies (free gift)

I was also given a free gift of 2 individually wrapped pistachio cookies. There were decent, but not particularly unique. They seemed like shortbread cookies with a bit of an extra milky flavour that further brought out a salted butter taste, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was some milk powder in the ingredients list (which I did not have). I did not notice any synthethic waxy mouthfeel so I doubt they used margarine or shortening. 

Store Display & Packaging

Finally, these are some photos of the store display showing their full menu of available pastries at their ION Singapore branch (click to enlarge to read the words), their packaging, and 2 pistachio cookies they gave me for free which I have not tried yet. I will update again if I find the cookies remarkable enough to comment on.

Discover other interesting Chinese pastries

• Classic Rose Pastry by Jiahua Flower Cake from Dali, Yunnan, China
• Hawthorn Soft Crisp by Bao's Pastry
• Tie Guan Yin Sun Cake by Ru Yi Tang
• Old Seng Choong Pastries
• Taiwanese Savoury Macadamia Tart by Shang Shin Select
• Hainanese Pepper Salt Crispy Mooncake and Fusion Mooncake by Amethyst Pastry & Cakes, Singapore
• Honey and Cheese Sun Cakes by Ru Yi Tang
• Rose Sun Cake by Ru Yi Tang
• Macau-inspired Portuguese Purple Sweet Potato Taro Egg Tart
• Cereal Prawn & Bak Kut Teh Cookies by Old Seng Choong