Lotus Cakes could be filled with carrots, or white lotus seed paste.
They mainly came in two colors. The stamens were yellow and required pumpkin, while the petals were red and required dragon fruit juice.
Lard had to be blended into the flour so the pastry would turn out flakier.
This was similar to Thousand-Layer Oil Cake, so he needed to prepare extra leaf lard. Thousand-Layer Oil Cake used it too.
Lu Qin made a round of the market and bought a whole range of ingredients.
The hardest thing to find was the Candied Winter Melon Strips used to decorate Thousand-Layer Oil Cake.
If pastries bought from small street shops were decorated with Candied Winter Melon Strips, people had better be careful. They contained additives.
The worst kind was made from mustard greens and food coloring. It was not poisonous to eat, but it did the body no good.
Naturally, Lu Qin would not buy that knockoff Candied Winter Melon Strips.
The better Candied Winter Melon Strips on the market, the kind without modern tricks, were cut from Dried Tangerine Peel, carrots, orange peel, papaya, radishes, and the like.
However, the most authentic kind was made from green apricots and candied roses.
Limited by costs such as price and labor, it was rather expensive.
In the past, only the imperial court or wealthy households could afford it.
Lu Qin searched for a full hour and asked around everywhere before finally finding a tiny storefront that sold this kind of Candied Winter Melon Strips.
The shop was run by an elderly couple and had been open for decades. Though it was a small workshop, it was fairly clean. They used no machinery, only wooden and bamboo tools.
Lu Qin happened to see the elderly couple making Kumquats and Honey Dates.
Glass