Steamed Banana Cake with Chinese Jujubes

In the realm of traditional Chinese tea snacks and brunch eating, there is a wide variety of steamed, flour-based concoctions called gao or “cakes.” Made variously of wheat or rice flour, with or without eggs or leaveners, they range in flavor from savory to cloyingly sweet and in texture from feather-light to leaden. The unifying factor is that they are all steamed as opposed to baked and are served with or between meals with tea—never as a dessert.

• Thi