Yong Peng Buy: Eng Hin Hokchew Biscuits & Noodle Factory (永兴福州饼面厂)

14 July 2023

Yong Peng is a town in Batu Pahat District, Johor, and is also known as “Little Fuzhou” (小福州) of Malaysia due to many immigrants settling down there from Fuzhou in the old days. Most businesses in Yong Peng today continue the tradition of making traditional Fuzhou (a.k.a. “Foochow” or “Hokchew” in dialect) specialties, such as noodle, vermicelli, biscuits, etc, and improving them over the years.

Eng Hin Hokchew Biscuits & Noodle Factory (永兴福州饼面厂) is a 70-year-old traditional bakery that makes traditional Hokchew biscuits and noodles that have been passed down through three generations. It is located along Jalan Besar, a trunk road in Yong Peng, and is easily accessible.

Eng Hin occupies two shop units, one as its bakery and the other for selling its freshly-made products, especially their popular Hokchew biscuits (福州饼), which are available in two sizes. The bigger Hokchew biscuit has a layer of white sesame seeds on it while the smaller version do not.

The filling of the big Hokchew biscuit uses candied winter melon and grated peanuts as main ingredients and is slightly chewy with roasted sesame fragrance. It is mildly sweet from the winter melon.

Aside from Hokchew biscuits, jiguang biscuits (继光饼) or simply kompia (光饼) are another hot-seller of Eng Hin. Kompia is another Fuzhou specialty and Eng Hin offered three flavours of them — apart from the more common and traditional mild-savoury kompia, they also have a mild-sweet version and a self-innovated wholemeal version.

The traditional (savoury) version has sesame seeds on its crust. The plain-sweet version is easy to distinguish from the wholemeal version. Eng Hin’s kompias have done away with the holes in the centre, which were traditionally created for a string to run through to hold several biscuits together for hanging around the neck — these biscuits were combat rations for soldiers during the Ming dynasty when fighting pirates.

The freshly-baked biscuits are soft with mild savoury / sweetness and are great for breakfast and for coffee breaks. Personally, I like them all and favour the wholemeal version more. But I will still buy all three versions the next time I visit Eng Hin again.