The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 34

LATIMES.COM/FOOD E5 Asmall battalion constructs the cakes on cardboard bases: first cake layer; whipped cream; strawberries; more whipped cream; second cake layer; then with whipped cream and a thin layer of nondairy topping that makes the cake especially white. They deftly toss sliced almonds on the sides. Brothers Manuel and Rafael Diaz, 38-year Phoenix veterans, put on the finishing touches. Armed with pastry bags and rose tips, they apply the roses, leaves and scrolled edges on the cake. brother does it Rafael says.

can tell which cakes are his and which are Butthey both learned from Youlen, who studied with the late Larry D. Powell, author of Big Book of Cake It hurt its continuing popularity that the cake has always been reasonably priced; an 8-inch round that serves up to 12 costs less than $24. It comes in a box with the logo an image of a chubby boy in a robe hiding a pastry box behind his back, created in the by artist Ty- town, it remains what is probably L.A.’s most popular cake. Not bad for a cake that is more than six decades old, a bakery icon that has been there for all the good times (anniversaries, graduations, job promotions), and some of the bad (goings-away, layoffs). Located in Chinatown on Broadway Street near Bamboo Lane, Phoenix is a two-story, blue-roofed pagoda of a bakery now run by the second and third generations of the Chan family.

son Youlen, 53, is head of production, and because even bakeries have to try to keep up with the has expandedits offerings in the last year to include dim sum and red velvet cupcakes. used to be croissants, but then people like it. They liked bagels. says Lun Chan, who retired in the but occasionally drops by the bakery, recently in a khaki suit, carrying aburgundy umbrella and wearing big, gold-trimmed, crystal- accented sunglasses (a look that might be described as Kim Jong Ilmeets Kanye West). goes in But his strawberry cake is still the engine of business, even if business what it used to be.

And while Chinatown prepares for this Moon Festival and the schedule is interrupted by moon cake making (see related story), a majority of customers come for the cake. been coming here for over 30 says Judy Scales, who lives on the Westside. bought maybe hundreds of cakes. So light, so refreshing. What a lot of people realize is you can special order it with peaches.

Bananas are good There are 16 cake sizes, from a4-inch round to a full sheet. You can request banana, pineapple, custard, lemon curd or chocolate mousse filling (peach only when available). You can have half the cake with strawberries and the other half with bananas or even strawberries mixed with bananas. But it is always two layers. true two-layer Youlen says.

have a reputation for making a tall The early days Lun late older brother, Fung Chow Chan, and his wife, Wai Hing, opened the bakery in 1938, the year Central Plaza was built. The original bakery was located a few blocks south of where Phoenix is now. Back Chanswere selling sesame cookies and almond cookies to dime stores and chop suey houses. it was good business. There was chop suey all Lun says.

Kayeused to come and buy sesame After a stint in the Army during World War II, Lun returned to the U.S. in 1943 and studied baking at the Frank Wiggins Trade School (now the Los Angeles Trade Technical College). He went to his native Hong Kong for several months to hone his skills in making traditional Chinese pastries. Back at Phoenix, Lun developed recipes: Chinese flaky pastries filled with black bean, lotus or winter melon, cookies, meringues. even used to bake apple pie, with lard in the crust.

So Lun says. And the cake. As Lun remembers it, it was during a tour of East Coast bakeries in the late with the Southern California Master Bakers Retailers Assn. that he came across the strawberry shortcakes that inspired his own version. more strawberries, put he says he thought to himself.

loves cake was born at the same time that the recipe for American chiffon cake went public. It was a recipe said to have been invented by a Los Angeles insurance agent fittingly named Harry Baker who replaced the butter in French vegetable oil, resulting in an especially light and airy cake. Baker sold the recipe to General Mills in 1947. Lun calls his Chinese but also says a recipe that an advisor at Frank Wiggins helped develop. really spongy, nice and Lun says.

beat the eggs, folded by cake took off slowly. At first, just two or three a day were sold. But by the time Phoenix had moved into its current larger location in 1977, word had spread about the not-too-sweet and so cake. Strawberries were delivered 100 to 200 crates at a time. The bakery sold as many as 1,000 cakes on abusy Saturday, Lun says.

lined up down the block. Unbelievable! If they knew me, they would come around back to get By brother, motivated by not being able to get bank loans despite having a successful business, had opened Cathay Bank, Southern first Chinese American-owned bank, in 1962 and then East-West Banka decade later. used to tell him, make the green dough, I make the cookie Lun says. The second generation of Chans already was ensconced in the life of the bakery: trimming strawberries, sweeping floors, greasing cake pans. Youlen, like his siblings and cousins, started helping out when he was 12.

was mandatory in this he says. Acquaintances recall Kellogg Chan, one of Fung sons and a lawyer-turned- businessman, showing up at card games dusting flour off his clothes. But it was Youlen who carried the torch. just sort of fell into he says. He attended the American Institute of Bakingin Kansas and has streamlined production.

Meeting demand at the bakery most days, often in a white short- sleeved shirt, shorts and a white apron, overseeing the cake-making assembly line. Cakes are baked in a heavy- duty Chubco, a revolving-tray oven that works like a Ferris wheel and is about the size of a mini van. Its five shelves are loaded one at a time, and the shelves (each fits five sheet pans) rotate during baking. The batter eggs, flour, sugar, oil, water mixed by hand but in acommercial mixer. dad always did things in smaller Youlen says, we be able to make enough On a good will make 400 to 500 cakes, says Craig Chan, second cousin son), who helps manage the bakery.

rus Wong, who painted the dragon mural in Central Plaza. some dispute in the family about who modeled Craig says. we think his uncle, an accountantwho also helps manage the business. Like much of the rest of Chinatown, Phoenix Bakery may have lived through its peak. There was an attempt to expand to other locations, which was abandoned.

Yet customers still come in a fairly steady stream, ordering cakes I get purple you write something in In a lot of is a throwback. It eschew shortening or lard. Many of the pastries are the same as were offered decades ago. Other items might be considered oddball: Besides eclairs and cream puffs, find Jordan almonds and Dutch mints alongsidepizza buns and Jamaican beef patties. But mention Phoenix to an Angeleno and the response is so often, know that bakery.

my favorite betty.hallock@latimes.com Strawberry cake forever Cake, from Mark Boster Los Angeles Times SWEET DREAM: Lun Chan, right, created the strawberry whipped-cream cake decades ago at Phoenix Bakery. Today, his son Youlen heads production at the Chinatown bakery. Thwack-thwack, thwack! Rafael Diaz hits the side of a wooden moon cake mold twice against his work surface, flips it over and hits it again so that the small, hefty cake pops right out. Alongtime employee at Phoenix Bakery, regular duties usually have him decorating the strawberry-whipped cream layer cakes that the bakery is known for. This time of year, shaping moon cakes for the annual Moon Festival, a harvest festival celebrated by the Chinese and Vietnamese dating 3,000 years to moon worship.

It takes place on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese calendar, which this year falls on Saturday. So on a recent weekday, Diaz and another employee, Yu Zhen Li, were making some of the 1,000 or so moon cakes that Phoenix will turn out this season. At the center of the moon cake is the salted duck egg yolk, which is surrounded by a filling of black beanor lotus paste or a mixture of meat, dried fruit and nuts. encased in a pastry shell, ideally just enough of it so that you can almost see through it to the filling. In the Phoenix kitchen, Li measured out the filling on a scale, 5 1 4 ounces of a mixture including Virginia ham, barbecue pork, dried fruits, almonds and sesame seeds; it has to be the exact amount or it fit in the mold.

The mixture is gathered into a ball and the preserved yolk is pressed into the top of it, positioned correctly so that it ends upin the center of the cake. When you cut the moon cake into quarters a dense pastry meant to be shared and eaten with tea), each person should get a part of the yolk. The mixture is wrapped in a thin layer of moon cake dough, made with a dark sugar syrup so a burnished golden-brown once baked. Then placed into a custom mold, carved with an insignia indicating the kind of filling. The mark of a good moon cake maker is the facileness with which he removes the cake from its mold before baking.

a rhythm says head of production Youlen Chan, a member of the founding family. boom! Twice on the side, once on His father, Lun Chan, retired patriarch, was its original moon cake maker. Diaz says he learned the art of de- molding moon cakes from Lun. hope it soon be a lost art. Says Diaz: the only one who knows how to do Phoenix Bakery, 969 N.

Broadway, Los Angeles, (213) 628-4642, www.phoenix bakeryinc.com. betty.hallock@latimes.com Glenn Koenig Los Angeles Times TRADITION: Inside every moon cake is a salted duck egg yolk. A pastry shell encases fillings such as lotus paste. On a harvest moon It takes a sure hand and artful technique to make the Moon Festival treat. Get while you can.

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