Belly button pastry () is a traditional pastry associated with the Hakka communities of Miaoli County, Taiwan. Occasionally, it is called moonlight cake (), nipple cake (), pacifier cake (), mung bean cake (), and mung bean puff ().
There are contradictory accounts of how it originated. In one account, when Taiwan under Japanese rule, the Hakka served the pastry to important visitors by relying on local ingredients. In a second story, during that same era, the 's workers relied on locally sourced ingredients to create an imitation of Japanese sweets. A third account held that the pastry's shape took inspiration from sweet potato that had been molded into an infant's pacifier. A fourth account said that it came from a mung bean puff that in which the crust ruptured and was breached by the filling.
See also
List of Taiwanese desserts List of desserts Lek-tau-phong Hakka cuisine Egg yolk pastry Taro pastry
References