Taiwan Cakes

This week is the lead up to Chinese New Year which takes places on the February 8th.  Perhaps for that reason we begin the week with some cakes from Taiwan.  Produced by a company called IMEI these were two cakes. cheesecake and honey cake that came in exactly the same size boxes and from the picture on the outside looked, well, identical.

Two cakes for today - horizontal view!

And the vertical view!

Not your usual cheese cake!

Honey for the other!

From the box you they look identical.

These cakes were perhaps wrapped with the Japanese market in mind in that there was several levels of packaging before you got to the cake. We had outer wrapping, box, inner wrapping, inner sleeve with paper covering and then the cake which were pre-sliced.

A little description on the inner packaging!

Remove the outside box and you get to the wrapping!

Then to the inside box!

A little covering and a message and the....

One of them was a honey cake and one of them was a cheesecake as explained in three languages English, Chinese and French(?).  We wonder if the French are a big market for these justifying the translation but whatever.

You get to the cake - all sliced and red' to go!

These cakes were very much like our pound cakes.  They really were almost identical with the honey cake being a bit browner with a darker top. The taste of cheese and honey were both pretty subtle. They were not dry and not that sweet which is what you expect from Asian pastries. They were an appropriate start for the beginning of the New Year celebration.

From the top the difference between the two seems clear.

Side by side it's a little more subtle!

Coming up is the year of the monkey, BTW.  We also got an introduction to the Chinese calendar. Apparently the months are all about 29 or 30 days with some longer than the others.  The months coincide with the phases of the moon but the year coincides with the sun beginning and ending on the winter solstice.  Mathematically it is not easy to figure out how this all fits together and then there is some kind of 60 year zodiac cycle regarding earth, wind fire and the various animals.  I think we are just content with knowing when the new year begins and we'll leave it at that.

The Chinese Zodiac...just don't ask us to explain it.