During the Lunar New Year of 1988Selena Wong wanted to create a special dessert for her family in Kingston, JamaicaWong, whose ancestors arrived on the island from China in the 19th century, was a self-taught baker who occasionally sold products from her home.
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Knowing the importance of lychees to the Jamaican Chinese experience, she prepared a light cake using canned lychees and their syrup.
Her creation, which she simply called “lychee cake”, It was a hit with her family, and within a few years, a national obsession was born. The cake has become one of Jamaica’s most popular desserts, sold in supermarkets, bakeries, and by home bakers. It has even migrated from Jamaica to become a cultural staple in cities with large Jamaican-American enclaves, such as Miami.
In United States, Lychee pie remains largely the domain of Caribbean home bakers. In 1978, Kay Chen, 84, emigrated from Jamaica to Miami to operate a Blockbuster video franchise. Before that, Chen, also a descendant of late 19th-century Chinese immigrants to Jamaica, was a seamstress, nightclub owner, restaurateur and beauty queen, crowned Miss Jamaica China in the 1950s.
But, like many Caribbean women, she took to baking for family and friends to earn extra money, making black cake, pone, ambrosia and, of course, lychee cake.
Nikki Stultz, who once sold lychee pies from her home in Miami, is now considering continuing that work in Marietta, Georgiawhere she recently moved. “One year I sold 300 pies during the Christmas season,” said Stultz, whose family also emigrated from China to Jamaica in the late 19th century.
Lychee remains one of the ingredients most associated with the descendants of Chinese immigrants, who first arrived in the Caribbean in the early 19th century as laborers in sugar cane fields, primarily in Cuba, Jamaica and Trinidad.
Although lychee trees were transported from China to Jamaica in the 18th century, no fresh fruit is used for the cake. The reason, Wong said, is that trees have a fickle production cycle, making them expensive.
“Plus, most Jamaicans wouldn’t give up the pleasure of eating fresh lychee outright,” said Virginia Burke, author of the cookbook “Eat Caribbean.”
Elise Yap, owner of The Blue House Bed & Breakfast in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, which serves lychee pie for its weekly Jamaican Chinese night, agrees that lychee is what she calls a “craving” for Jamaicans. Her adoptive father’s Jamaica Ice Cream Company created lychee ice cream in the 1940s.
“I think this cake is popular because it’s so fresh,” Stultz said. Like many lychee bakers, she keeps her unique recipe a secret. “It looks like a simple cake, but it’s not,” she said. “There’s a trick to getting the bread light and whipping the cream so it stays firm.”
Wong credits lychee cake with starting what is now her successful cake business. She recently opened a dessert shop called Bakery in Kingston.
“I have made lychee cake for prime ministers, actors and musicians,” she said. “It has become a very special cake for Jamaicans.”
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