Shu ke guo, the mouse-ear cake
Made with the juice of the mouse-ear herb, black once steamed, and eaten at Qingming.
Pronunciation shǔ ké guǒ｜Food and tea｜One entry in the Chaoshan glossary
What it means
The herb is picked as it comes up around Qingming, pounded to a juice and worked into the skin; the colour is a dark green shading to black, and the filling is mostly sweet. The plant has its season, and past it the cake cannot be made at all, which is why it appears for only a month or two a year.
The black is not colouring but the juice itself. Steamed, it is glossy; cold, it stiffens, and only reheating softens it again. The skin is glutinous rice flour with the juice, the proportion varying by household: more herb gives a darker cake with a bitter finish, less gives a paler one that ends sweet. Bean paste, peanut and sesame are the usual fillings, and there are savoury versions.
When it is eaten
Around Qingming. A batch is made at one go, steamed and spread out to cool, and then given to relatives or carried away on a journey.
Words easily confused
The mouse-ear cake and the pu-tree cake both belong to Qingming and both take a plant juice into the skin, and the colours differ: this one nearly black, the other a clear green. They are not two names for one cake.
Read next: Chaoshan rice cakes: a kind for every festival.
Same group: guo, the rice cake, the pu-tree cake, the peach cake.
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Last revised: 3 November 2026