A set of jade rabbit-themed afternoon tea and pastry is launched to celebrate Lunar New Year.

The desserts in the set are decorated with rabbit patterns.

Zang Chaiyuan has been working from morning to night as people from across the country order her steamed buns, especially the rabbit-shaped, to celebrate Lunar New Year.

Her steamed bun in the shape of a rabbit, dressed in a lion-dance costume, is one of the most popular products and it is fluffy and cute. She started to create different rabbit-shaped huabobo, a flowerlike steamed bun, with a history stretching back more than 300 years, several months ago to be in time to celebrate Spring Festival.

"I usually get 30 to 40 online orders daily, but since December,the number has doubled and my team members have to work at full capacity," Zang says.

As the Year of the Rabbit looms,pastry chefs are using the rabbit element in their creations, whether traditional steamed buns, puff pastry or modern snacks and high tea.

Besides providing various festive pastry choices, they are also infusing their best wishes of the new year to the customers into the rabbit-related designs.

Zang, 26, from Yantai, East China's Shandong province, has given huabobo, the provincial intangible cultural heritage in Shandong, a modern twist with her rabbit designs.

"It's just made of milk, egg, sugar and flour," she says, adding that all the colors are extracts from natural ingredients, such as koji rice for the color red, spinach for the green, and pumpkin for the orange.

According to her, the key to make the steamed bun fluffy is the appropriate temperature and humidity to ferment the dough.

"Rabbits are cute, and I can create many products inspired by rabbits," she says.

She also hosts online and on-site pastry courses to show how to make them.

"The students vary from youngsters to people in their 50s. Some of them like this craft skill that combines traditional Chinese culture,and some want to learn to make them for their loved ones," she says.

The rabbit cake recently launched by Beijing's time-honored snack brand Daoxiangcun has become a hot product among customers in the capital. Users on popular Chinese review and rating service Dianping and major lifestyle-sharing platform Xiaohongshu have written hundreds of comments and share where to buy the cake with cute rabbit patterns on the outside and soybean, cheese and carrot fillings inside.

As the festive season comes,Empark Prime Hotel Beijing,located in Beijing's Wangfujing street, launched a serving of jade rabbit-themed afternoon tea with pastry, which comprises nine sweet and savory artistic desserts.

According to Li Nan, executive pastry chef of the hotel, from strawberry fortune-bag-shaped cakes to chocolate mousse with peaches, he puts red and rabbit elements into each dessert to add a festive atmosphere.

He also chooses a traditional three-layered Chinese-style wood box to hold the jade-rabbit desserts to celebrate Lunar New Year.

Wu Yang, a pastry chef in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province,is popular on short-video app Douyin because of his creativity in making the lion-head puff pastry.

The cute fluffy lion head, which integrates the intangible cultural heritage of lion dancing, has attracted tens of thousands of people to try to replicate. But success is sometimes elusive. It involves six steps,each boasting a complex technique.If one tiny mistake is made in any step, then the final product fails.

To achieve the vivid effect of the mane on the lion head after deep-frying, Wu has to cut 160 times on the tiny dough without cutting it through.

Wu, 36, whose Chinese zodiac sign is a rabbit, recently created a new puff pastry piece of Tu'er Ye (the rabbit god) wearing a lion head to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit.

According to him, the difficulty level of the rabbit with lion head puff pastry is much higher than just the lion head, as he has to make a half-size lion head, which needs more elaborate operations.

He says he is also planning on creating three to four new rabbit-shaped puff pastry with designs inspired by accessories from Peking Opera.

Having been devoted to Chinese pastry for two decades, Wu says he hopes that, by combining traditional Chinese culture with his puff pastry works, he can attract more young people to find interest in Chinese pastry.

liyingxue@chinadaily.com.cn