Dingding Gao (Steamed Rice Cup-Cake)

Dingding gao is a traditional rice snack long made in Yichang and across western Hubei: rice and glutinous-rice flours are mixed with brown or white sugar, packed into small bamboo tubes or wooden cups and steamed over a boiler; the cakes come out as small golden cylinders, soft and dense, sweet without cloying, often with a faint fragrance of rice wine.

Dingding gao comes from the folk kitchens of western Hubei; with easy ingredients and quick steaming it became a classic shoulder-pole street snack of old Yichang, its name said to echo the "ding-ding" sound from the steamer, carrying the childhood memories of generations of locals.

Steamed to order and lifted out with a small bamboo skewer to be eaten hot, it is soft and warmly sweet, usually a walking-along snack or an after-school treat for children, most often seen in autumn and winter.

The small-bamboo-tube steaming, the soft rice-wine-scented crumb and the street-side steamer with its "ding-ding" chorus are the distinctive marks of dingding gao.