Shanghai's sweets and pastries: the half that is not Western dessert

Ask what sweet things Shanghai has and the answer is often a Western cake: a mousse, a cheesecake, a croissant. Many visitors conclude the city has no sweets of its own. That points the wrong way: plenty is sweet here, it simply never occupies the dessert slot.

A Chinese meal does not end sweet. Sweet things sit between meals, in festival weeks, and in a hot morning bowl. What you want is not a dessert shop but a rice-cake counter, a sweet-soup shop, a pastry case and, in autumn, a corner wok. No shop or price is named here: stalls turn over fast, so what helps is knowing what you will meet.

No dessert course, but plenty of sweet things

The Western dessert is the last square of a meal: a menu, a seat, a plate. A Chinese meal has no such square, so even the best benbang restaurant will not finish by sending out something sweet. Eight-treasure rice appears mid-banquet, fermented-rice dumplings are a bowl at seven in the morning, sweet lotus root waits sliced on a cooked-food counter, weighed together with the duck you buy.

The shape follows: small enough for one hand, or finished in a bowl. So the question is not which dessert shop is good, but what locals are eating that is sweet now.

Sorted by when they are eaten, not by shop

Sort by shop and you get nowhere: one counter may hold breakfast, snacks, New Year items. Sort by when they are eaten and there are six groups.

Rice and glutinous rice. The largest group and the base of the set: dumplings, cakes and balls of rice flour with bean paste, sesame or osmanthus. Sticky, chewy, filling after two, hard cold.

Steamed cakes. Rice flour mixed to a loose crumb, pressed into a mould and steamed, some with bean paste, some with only sugar and the smell of rice, often pink, white or pale green.

Flaky pastries. Lard and flour folded into layers, baked until they shatter, filled sweet: closer to a teahouse pastry than a dessert, often boxed as a gift.

Sweet soups and hot sweet drinks. A small bowl, more liquid than solid: beans, rice, dumplings or taro in sweet broth. Hot in winter, iced in summer, ordered alone.

Festival food. Made for weeks around one festival, gone afterwards, or no longer the same thing.

The bakery in between. Not all European bread: egg tarts, cream squares and butterfly pastries are hybrids remade here, European method, Chinese sugar.

Nine things worth recognising

• Fermented rice with small dumplings (jiuniang yuanzi). Fermented glutinous rice boiled with water, small unfilled rice dumplings added, often an egg and a pinch of osmanthus. One hot bowl, more liquid than dumplings; the ferment brings alcohol and sourness, the sweetness is added sugar.
• Eight-treasure rice (babao fan). Glutinous rice steamed with sugar and lard, dates, longans, lotus seeds, melon seeds and candied fruit, a layer of bean paste, more rice, steamed and turned out. Round, cut into wedges, shared: a New Year and banquet dish, not one portion.
• Sweet lotus root (nuomi tang ou). Lotus root packed with glutinous rice, simmered with sugar, red dates and osmanthus until the root darkens, sliced cold. A cold dish at the table, sold by weight at cooked-food counters.
• Osmanthus (guihua). Not a dish but a spoonful of sugared osmanthus over lotus root, rice dumplings and cakes. When it flowers in September and October, every sweet thing in the city takes that flavour.
• Dingsheng cake (dingsheng gao). A small pale pink rice-flour cake steamed in a mould with bean paste at the centre, bought a few at a time, eaten walking.
• Sugar-fried chestnuts (tang chao lizi). Chestnuts turned in a cauldron with black sand and sugar until the shells split. From autumn, busiest in winter, sold by weight in paper bags, peeling best too hot to hold.
• Egg tart (danta). A flaky shell of set egg and milk custard, baked until the surface blisters; almost every bakery sells them, handed over hot, the pastry shedding.
• Cream square (naiyou xiaofang). Sponge cake with whipped fresh cream in the middle and on top, sold chilled: the old Shanghai bakery’s signature, and nothing but cake and cream.
• Green rice ball (qingtuan). Mugwort or wheatgrass juice worked into rice flour round bean paste, steamed dark green, brushed with oil; only in the weeks around Qingming.

Sweetness: the sugar is in the texture

Sugar in Jiangnan cooking is first a technique, holding down salt, glazing a braise, rounding sourness, as whether Shanghai food is all sweet sets out; this page does not repeat it. In sweets it builds texture: rice is flat without sugar, bean paste only goes sandy with fat and sugar, lotus root needs sugar to glaze and turn sticky, and osmanthus only holds if sugar carries it.

A first encounter gives two opposite reactions: one finds it not sweet beside a chocolate cake, another far too sweet after a whole eight-treasure rice. The problem is quantity, not sweetness: these are built around a small piece or a small bowl.

Honesty too: the cream square, egg tart and eight-treasure rice are genuinely sweet. The difference is the eating, one small piece with something hot and unsweetened.

Where to buy them, and when they exist

Pastry case and rice-cake shop. A glass case of small cakes, balls, rolls, a scale behind it. Buy two, point, buy by weight; festival items appear first.

Sweet-soup shop. A few tables, bowls of fermented-rice dumplings, red bean soup, black sesame paste. Hours are more flexible than a restaurant’s and vary by shop, so check on the day.

Market stalls and cooked-food counters. The rice-cake stall and the lotus root counter both sell by weight, and will sell a small portion to eat standing up; the Shanghai markets guide covers how the cooked-food counter is bought and kept.

Bakery. Egg tarts, cream squares and butterfly pastries in ordinary bakeries and chains alike: consistent, long hours, no planning.

Seasonal stand. The chestnut cauldron on an autumn corner is the only one that finds you: a wok, paper bags, a queue. Green rice balls and mooncakes appear outside pastry shops around Qingming and Mid-Autumn. They exist only in season, not the same place each year.

Settle two things: by weight or by the piece. Lotus root, chestnuts and rice cakes by weight; egg tarts, green rice balls and eight-treasure rice by piece or box. The price is on the scale or the small print, payment mostly by QR code.

• Autumn: everything osmanthus, lotus root, the first chestnuts, Double Ninth cake, mooncakes.
• Winter: chestnuts busiest, eight-treasure rice and New Year rice cake, hot fermented-rice dumplings and sweet soups, Lantern Festival dumplings.
• Spring: green rice balls, only the weeks around Qingming.
• Summer: iced mung bean and red bean soups, sweet soy milk.

The festivals follow the lunar calendar, dates moving each year; check the year’s dates before you go.

How to eat them, what to drink, who should skip it

Eat them hot. Fermented-rice dumplings, chestnuts, egg tarts, eight-treasure rice and Lantern Festival dumplings are eaten hot; cold, rice hardens, pastry softens and chestnut skin sticks to the flesh. The only one that must be cold is the cream square.

A bowl of fermented-rice dumplings is breakfast, not dessert. Between seven and nine it belongs with the buns and xiaolongbao; mid-afternoon too, and few go out for one after dinner.

Drink hot Chinese tea. Green tea’s clarity, jasmine’s perfume, an oolong’s or pu’er’s weight cut the stickiness and sugar of rice and bean paste. Coffee fits badly, its roast fighting osmanthus and bean paste; a sweet drink is worse, sugar on sugar.

It suits anyone who likes glutinous textures, finds Western desserts too sweet, wants to see daily life cheaply, or comes in autumn.

Skip it for a plated dessert after dinner, which does not exist; for sticky, chewy textures, which is most of the list; for strict vegetarians, since eight-treasure rice and dumpling fillings usually contain lard; for sesame or nut allergies, so ask about fillings.

The most famous one is often the plainest. The cream square is a couple of generations’ memory, but tastes of sponge and cream and nothing else; its value is being unchanged, not worth a detour. Eight-treasure rice likewise: always on a banquet table, and many eat one spoonful.

The tourist-street version is made for photographs. Rice cakes near attractions come boxed, brighter and more elaborate, price up, taste down; lotus root turns up vacuum-packed, biting hard. The same things are cheaper and better in a residential neighbourhood.

Most of it is cheap snack food, not a dessert experience. No menu, no plating, a paper bag and a tray, eaten standing in the street. Look for a shop to sit down in and you will not find it.

Put this half with the savoury half and the city’s everyday eating is complete: Shanghai’s noodles and snacks covers noodles, wonton and breakfast, and the Shanghai breakfast guide covers the morning.