Pancake master makes flowers bloom

As Spring Festival approaches,Xu Haixia, 53 - a maker of Chinese pancakes in Mengyin county of Linyi, Shandong province -becomes a master artist in high demand for her three-dimensional pancake flowers and other creations.

Last year, Xu copied world-famous paintings using pancakes,including Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers, and won many fans.

Ahead of the holiday, pancake flower sales have tripled, Xu said, as people buy baskets of the intricate edible art for relatives and friends.Her work is both appetizing and appealing to the eye, she said.

Xu has been making pancakes - a thin paperlike food made of grain -for 15 years.

"Pancakes are a staple food for three meals a day in our village, so I chose to make and sell pancakes,"she said.

Her business is going well as she continues to innovate and present new pancake products.

Pancakes are the signature snack locally, and yellow peaches grow in abundance. Virtually every family has peach trees, so Xu tried to make peach-flavored pancakes.

"At the beginning, I used big crunchy peaches, but those pancakes didn't taste good," she said.

Then she added more peaches,only to find that the pancakes were hard to flip. At last, she tried squishy, ripe fruit and the peachy pancakes came to life.

"So far, I have made more than 50 flavors of pancakes using fruits and vegetables,"she said.

Her pancake products come in several natural colors, depending on the ingredient, such as dragon fruit, red jujube, pumpkin, black sesame seed, celery and, of course,peaches.

Four years ago, thinking about all those colors, she got the idea of making pancake flowers.

"I loved to embroider flowers when I worked in an embroidery factory, so I wondered whether I could make these colorful pancakes into flowers," she said.

Her ideas were met with skepticism by her husband and fellow villagers at the beginning.

"I told her there was no way to work it out because the pancakes are too crispy. How can crispy things be made into flowers, which need to be twisted and folded," said Zhao Jian, Xu's husband.

But Xu was persistent.

"I worked on it for four days and made a little prototype, which wasn't good looking," Xu said.

To master the shape of pancake petals, Xu went to parks to study real flowers. She tried hundreds of times to discover the perfect moment to fold a pancake into a flower petal.

"We need to fold the pancake at a particular time when it is not too dry or wet," she said.

After more than three months of work, day and night, the shapes of the pancake flower petals became more consistent.

But the petals couldn't be stuck together with water, and if Xu used regular glue, the flowers would not be edible. She tried several materials and at last found her answer -honey and glutinous rice.

A splash of colorful pancake flowers in baskets greet customers in her store - yellow cherry blossoms, red roses, peonies in yellow,white, pink and purple. They're all amazingly realistic.

"One basket of pancake flowers can sell for 88 yuan ($13), which is 10 times more than the ordinary pancakes we used to sell," Xu said.

Pancake flower products have been keeping Xu busy, especially on special occasions, such as Mother's Day, International Women's Day and Teachers' Day, as many people look for a unique gift.

During festivals and holidays, Xu and some fellow villagers work long hours to meet demand. The pancake business she runs now provides jobs for more than 30 women.

"It's good for those who need to take care of the elderly and children," she said. "They can stay at home and come to work when they have time."