Rustic country cake taste

Besides modern cakes as a distinct nuance of the world of delicious cakes, some localities and people still make heirloom cakes, preserving the countryside through rustic and idyllic cakes. With the profession of making folk cakes, many households have a stable source of income.
In the small market of Trung An commune, Co Do district, Nguyen Thi Kim Loan’s salty pig skin cake is very expensive because of its delicious taste and affordable price. Ms. Loan’s family (living in Thanh Loc 2 hamlet, Trung An commune) has maintained this cake making profession for more than 30 years. Ms. Loan confided: “My mother-in-law has a profession of making folk cakes, specializing in making all kinds of country cakes, such as: banh soup, beef cake, beo cake, bean soup, etc. Previously, she directly made cakes, and I just supplement and carry it to the market to sell every day. Later, I expanded the scale, developed the family’s heirloom cake making profession, accepted to make cakes for weddings and parties …”.

Ms. Dam (Thoi Ninh area, Thoi An Dong ward, Binh Thuy district) is wrapping coconut leaf cake. Salted pork skin cake, also known as salty cake, is created into various types of flatbreads, vegetarian cakes. According to Ms. Loan, making savory pork skin cakes is not difficult, but you must have your own secret to make the cake crispy, chewy and have a characteristic fatty taste. To have a delicious pork skin cake, the main ingredient is rice flour; The filling is made from cassava root, red radish and dried shrimp. And an indispensable ingredient is coconut milk, which contributes to making the cake more flavorful, fatty and fragrant. Currently, when technology develops, many bakers switch to electric ovens, but Loan still maintains the method of manual steaming, pinching with rice husks to adjust the temperature accordingly. Every day, Ms. Loan steams about 150 salty pork skin cakes, priced at 3,000 VND/piece, with dried shrimp filling; 2,000 VND/piece for flatbread and cake filled with cassava, red radish. Ms. Loan said: “Every day, I sell salty pork skin cakes with other dishes, such as silkworm cakes, wet cakes, etc. Depending on the number of orders from customers, I increase or decrease the number of cakes.” For most folk cakes, although the ingredients are easy to find, it also requires a lot of care and ingenuity of the workers to produce eye-catching and delicious batches of cakes. Huynh Thi Ha’s family, commonly known as Ms. 3 Dam, 65 years old (living in Thoi Ninh area, Thoi An Dong ward, Binh Thuy district), making coconut leaf cakes has helped her family “eat well, made” over the past 14 years. Ms. Dam said that, when she was a girl in the countryside, everyone knew how to make cakes, because they were taught the craft by their grandparents and learned from neighbors. While quickly wrapping the cakes, Ms. Dam shared: “I can pack 17 cakes for 1 kg of sticky rice. To get a delicious, fragrant coconut cake, you have to go through many stages. First buy a plant (coconut leaves) used to wrap the barrel of the cake. Glutinous must choose to buy new sticky rice to stir-fry, squeeze coconut milk and mix it with coconut carcasses, add salt, sugar, and beans. To make the cake, must cook green beans, cut ripe bananas. After all the preliminaries were done, I started wrapping the cake.” Every day, on a small bicycle, Ms. Dam only sells coconut leaf cakes around the area of ​​Thoi An Dong market. Her cakes sold quite well, by 6 a.m. sold out. On average, she packs over 100 cakes every day, both retailing and removing termites for 5,000 VND/piece; minus expenses, she made a profit of over 120,000 dong. Particularly on holidays and Tet, neighbors come to her to order a package of Tet cakes. Although the money is not much, it also helps her to live with the profession, satisfying her desire to preserve the taste of country cakes. Currently, with the pace of urbanization, many types of cakes have been born, meeting the increasing tastes of customers, but folk cakes still have a certain place in the market, helping many small business households to earn income. stable input. Through the skillful hands of artisans, the folk cakes are more delicious, rounder, and converge the essence of home products.