Sichuan food is known abroad for heat, but the sweet side of the local kitchen is more interesting and almost unknown outside China. Chengdu's sweets are based on glutinous rice, sesame, sugar, molasses and red bean rather than wheat and butter, many of them are fried or steamed rather than baked, and they are eaten as snacks in the afternoon or at festivals rather than as a dessert after a meal. The old teahouses and the snack streets sell most of them, and a single street can supply six kinds in an hour.
What to look for
Tang you guo zi are small glutinous rice balls fried until crisp and then rolled in a molasses or brown sugar syrup and sesame - hot, chewy at the centre and hard at the shell, and best eaten within minutes. Dan hong gao is a thin pancake cooked in a small copper pan, slightly sweet and soft, and often folded around a filling. San da pao, a Chengdu speciality, is made by throwing balls of glutinous rice dough onto a board covered with ground sesame and soybean flour, with a loud bang, and then dressing them in syrup. There are also cold sweets: bingfen, a jelly made from fig seeds and served with brown sugar syrup, and liang gao, a chilled rice jelly. Alongside them sit sesame balls with red bean paste, steamed cakes with jujube, and sweet soups of red bean, mung bean or lotus seed.
The bakeries
Chengdu also has a long-standing bakery trade, part Chinese and part European, producing butter cookies, filled sponge cakes, cream rolls and the soft milk breads that Chinese bakeries do well. These shops are cheap, sell by weight and are found on most shopping streets; the oldest have been in the same family for decades and still use paper bags and glass counters. The confectionery shops sell peanut and sesame brittle, candied ginger, dried fruit and sugared nuts by weight, which travel well and make good gifts.
Practical notes
Fried sweets are best fresh and do not keep; buy them where you see them being made rather than in advance. Most of these are sold from windows and small counters rather than in restaurants, and the price is per piece or per weight, paid by phone. Sichuan's sweets are less sugary than Cantonese or Western versions, so do not expect desserts of that intensity. Vegetarians should check whether lard is used in a given pastry, which it sometimes is, and anyone avoiding nuts should ask about sesame and peanut content, both of which are everywhere.
