Chinese Rose Pastries Recipe (玫瑰饼 méiguībǐng)

These Chinese rose pastries are another traditional Chinese royal favourite.

Apparently one of the Qianlong emperor's favourite desserts, rose pastries are an elegant combination of delicately flaky pastry and sweet rose petal jam.

Like jujube flower pastries, the pastry of these Chinese rose cakes is made out of two different kinds of dough: an oil dough and a water dough. Rolled together, they create really fine, delicate layers of melt-in-the-mouth pastry.

I bought Chinese rose petal jam online to make these rose pastries – much easier (and more economical for most) than buying bundles and bundles of fresh roses, picking off the petals, washing the petals and then candying them in sugar.

But if you're using shop-bought Chinese rose petal jam like I am, you probably have to drain it of excess syrup before you can use the candied petals, or your filling will be too wet and unmanageable.

To make the filling manageable enough to roll into balls, you need to add a little sticky rice flour. The exact amount depends on how much or little syrup you manage to squeeze out of the rose jam – so use a little less flour to start off with, and keep a little extra on hand in case you need it.

You can also watch me make these on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes eight rose pastries.)

Ingredients for Rose Jam Filling:

400g Chinese rose jam
35g (approximately) glutinous rice flour

Ingredients for Water Dough:

180g plain flour
80g shortening (Crisco or Trex), melted
20g icing sugar
45ml water

Ingredients for Oil Dough:

115g plain flour
60g shortening (Crisco or Trex), melted

To Decorate:

Red food colouring

Method:

1. To make the rose jam filling, place the Chinese rose jam in a fine sieve over a small bowl and, using the back of a spoon, squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Reserve the rose syrup, and place the squeezed rose petals in a bigger bowl.

2. Stir in the glutinous rice flour. If it's a bit on the dry side, add back a little of the rose syrup, until the mixture clumps together like a dough. If it's a bit on the gooey side, add a little more flour, until it forms a very sticky dough.

3. Divide the mixture into eight portions, roll into balls (it'll be very sticky, so using food-safe gloves helps) and set aside. You can now discard the remaining rose syrup, or keep it to drizzle over ice cream or yoghurt, or have with coffee.

4. Make the water dough by stirring its ingredients together in one bowl and kneading until it comes together smoothly, and the oil dough by combining its ingredients in a separate bowl. Separate and roll both into eight balls each.

5. Take a ball of water dough and flatten it out into a circle, pop an oil dough ball in the centre and close up the water dough around it like a dumpling. Repeat with the rest of the water and dough balls.

6. Roll the stuffed balls out into a long oval shape and roll up into a fat spiral. Cover with clingfilm and rest for 10 minutes. Turn it 90° and roll it it out into another oval, and roll up again. Repeat with the rest of the balls, and let them rest for another 10 minutes.

7. At this stage, preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper.

8. Take one of your pastry logs and poke a crease in the middle of it, and fold the two spiral ends inwards. Flatten it down into a rough disc shape, pop a rose jam ball in the middle, and close up like a dumpling again. Repeat with the rest of the pastry logs and dough balls, covering them with clingfilm as you go so they don't dry out.

9. Roll the balls into fat discs and place on your baking sheet.

10. Dab on a dot of red food colouring in the centre of each, paint on petals, and bake for 15–18 minutes, so that the pastry is only just showing signs of going brown but is still pale.

11. Leave to cool on a wire rack before eating.

Enjoy, and have fun.