Soft and fragrant Phong Yen honey cake

(Baonghean) - Picking up each hot, fragrant honey cake from the pot and placing it in a basket next to her, Ms. Phan Thi Hien (45 years old), the "honey cake maker" of Phong Yen cake making village, Dien Dong commune (Dien Chau) quickly made a new batch of cakes. The phone rang continuously, she pressed the button and said loudly: "The cakes are just cooked, I was about to call you to pick them up". Ms. Hien looked at us and smiled: "Customers who ordered cakes have been calling continuously since morning. It's fun to have a job like this, but I'm always busy, dear!...".

When she was nine or ten, every morning, Hien would hear the familiar calls of her older brothers and sisters from outside the gate: "Aunt Doan, are the cakes ready yet?" It was the voice of children from Phong Yen village asking her mother. The honey cakes smelled fragrant in her hands, peeling off the two layers of banana leaves to see the dark brown inside of the cake, the filling was the color of golden broad beans, biting into a piece of sticky cake, it stuck to her teeth. Hien was the third generation to make cakes. Her maternal grandmother was famous in Dien Dong commune, she passed on the cake-making profession to her mother, Tang Thi Doan, and then Doan's mother passed on the profession to her.

I still remember, when I was little, every time I woke up, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in the early morning, Doan's mother would sit by the stone mill turning the dough. At that time, Phong Yen village only had five or seven households making honey cakes. After waking up a few times, seeing my mother working hard late at night, Hien also woke up to help her mother make the cakes. My mother said: "You are still young, sleep to regain strength to go to school tomorrow". Feeling sorry for my mother working hard with the cakes, her hair was always gray with dust, Hien still decided to get up to help her mother wipe the banana leaves, and boil the cakes. Every time like that, Hien observed the way her mother soaked sticky rice, pounded beans, her mother's hands kneaded each handful of dough to spread out evenly to put the bean filling in the middle, her mother skillfully stroked the banana leaves to make the cake square and beautiful before putting it in the pot to cook.

Then every misty morning, she followed her mother's honey cake cart to all the markets in the district. One day, Chua market (Dien Hanh commune), one day, Moi market (Dien Thap commune), So market (Dien Dong commune)... Wherever she went, her mother's honey cake hawking voice could be heard. The mother and daughter had no sandals or clogs. Mrs. Doan carried the cakes, and Ms. Hien held two small chairs so that they would have seats to sit on when they got to the market. One day, when the cake cart arrived at the market, it rained unseasonably, and both mother and daughter did not know where to take shelter. Mrs. Doan had to take off her outer shirt to cover the basket of cakes, and their hair and clothes were soaked. However, when they got to the market and sold two baskets of honey cakes, the sun had dried their clothes. "Those days were so hard," Ms. Hien said.

Mrs. Doan's honey cakes were big, delicious, and had few leaves. Adults could eat only a few to be full until noon. But at that time, no one had enough money to buy honey cakes every day. Sometimes this family would buy one, tomorrow another family would buy a few, cut them into 6 or 8 pieces to divide among the family. Many times, the person who bought the cakes would ask Mrs. Doan to peel and cut the cakes so that they could bring them home and divide them into portions. The pleasure of selling cakes back then was much different from now. Families would exchange sticky rice for cakes, and families would pick banana leaves from the garden. Many days when they came home, the carrying poles of Ms. Hien and her mother were full of green banana leaves. Every day, she only made about 50 or 70 cakes, which was enough to buy several lots of rice.

While talking, Ms. Hien bent over to knead the sticky rice flour to prepare a new batch of cakes. She looked very busy. For nearly 3 hours, her hands never rested. Ms. Hien said that when it came to kneading the dough and wrapping the cakes, she sat for three or four hours, her hands were tired, her back and neck hurt. Compared to before, she was much stronger. Nowadays, every family grinds flour by machine, but in the time of my grandmother and mother, making a hundred honey cakes took the whole night, her hands were tired and calloused. While talking, Ms. Hien pointed to the stone mortar in the corner of the house: "That is the stone mortar, a souvenir of the time when my mother and I used to grind flour to make cakes. In my generation, we still use it. Nearly 10 years ago, I bought a flour mill, I still keep it to use when there is a power outage." Then she said that this stone mortar was made by Ms. Doan herself. She had to go to Ky hill in Yen Thanh to find a big rock, tie it to a bicycle, and sit there chiseling for months. She admired her mother's hard work and realized that the cakes her mother worked hard to save money to raise her and her siblings made her appreciate her work even more.

Five or seven people made the cakes, then gradually dozens of households made the cakes. In those days, most of the cakes were made by hand, the flour milling stage was the most laborious. Ms. Hien still clearly remembers many days when her father came home from pounding rice for hire at midnight, seeing her mother still sitting there working hard turning the flour, on a winter night with her mother sweating profusely, her father sat down to help her, she still did not stop but turned to pounding beans, the sound of the stone mortar and pestle pounding beans resounded all night long.

Now, in Phong Yen cake making village, every household makes cakes until late at night because of the high demand for cakes. At 4am, the village wakes up to make cakes, the sound of laughter and talking, the lights are on, bustling with a profession. Phong Yen cakes are famous for being delicious and clean, so people in the area and outside the district know about them. People come to buy them as gifts, to worship ancestors on Tet, death anniversaries, to bring them to the market to sell, to eat for breakfast, for brunch... Ms. Hien learned from her mother how to choose sticky rice, choose beans, soak sticky rice... so every batch of her cakes is successful. She said, you have to choose new sticky rice, after washing the sticky rice cleanly, picking out the stones, soaking the sticky rice in plain water (tap water) for 2 hours, after soaking, put it in a blender, take the ground flour and put it on a cloth to mix the flour.

After kneading the dough, put it on an aluminum tray, wash your hands with lemon or salt water, and knead the dough until it is smooth. When the dough is smooth, add brown sugar or molasses and knead for about an hour. The longer you knead the sticky rice flour and molasses, the more the sugar will blend together, and when you eat the cake, it will be both sweet and soft. When the dough is done, use a rice spoon to scoop 2 spoons of dough, use 10 fingertips to spread the dough into a small bowl, scoop a spoonful of crushed mung bean paste, shredded fresh coconut as filling, and roll it into a ball. Wash fresh banana leaves, dry them in the sun for one day to soften them so that they can be wrapped easily without tearing them, and use two layers of leaves to wrap the cake. The cooking step is also very important, the heat must be even, and the cake must be boiled for 1.5 hours. When the pot of cake boils, the aroma fills the house, the whole village because every house cooks the cake. Some families cook the cake in the evening, then put the cake in a basket and it will still be hot the next morning. Most bakers in Phong Yen village usually wake up at 4am to cook the cakes, so at 9am or 10am the cakes are still hot in the baskets that have been carefully covered with several layers of dry banana leaves.

Ms. Hien is preparing a new batch of cakes.

Regardless of winter or summer, around 4am, Ms. Hien wakes up to light the fire to boil the cakes. In the past, her husband's parents worked together to help her, but in recent years, their grandparents have aged, and she cannot bear to let her parents stay up all night making cakes, so she and her husband work hard to make cakes. Her three children are studying at a university far from home. Ms. Hien happily says: "Thanks to the income from making cakes, we have money to send to the three of them to study." On average, Ms. Hien wraps nearly 1,000 honey cakes a day, equivalent to nearly a quintal of sticky rice. Her customers are mainly traders who buy and sell them at the markets. "I buy cakes for 20 (ie 2,000 VND each), but people from inside and outside the commune come to buy, I only buy at wholesale price. The cake-making profession always has people coming and going, it's very fun."

In Dien Dong commune, people eat cakes for breakfast, brunch, sometimes teachers, retired cadres or people coming home from the fields also stop by to buy some to bring home. People's lives are not as difficult as before. Honey cakes in Phong Yen are sweet, sticky from the countryside, rich from beans, coconut, delicious, chewy when hot, chewy when cold, really attractive.

During the months before Tet, during and after Tet, Ms. Hien's family makes 150 kg of sticky rice every day, has to hire more people, the price of Tet cakes is 5,000 VND each because they are bigger and of better quality. "There are many delicious dishes on Tet, people buy a lot, aren't they afraid of spoiling?" - I asked. Ms. Hien smiled and replied: "People buy them for themselves, buy them as gifts... In Dien Dong in particular, and the countrysides of Yen, Dien, and Quynh in general, on Tet, in addition to Chung cakes to worship ancestors, there are also honey cakes. Honey cakes are better than sticky rice cakes and leaf cakes because they can be kept for a long time, my dear! In winter, honey cakes can be kept for 7 to 10 days. After 10 days, they can be placed on the stove and still be delicious. The cakes are made with quality, paying attention to all stages, choosing sticky rice, soaking sticky rice, cooking beans, quality of leaves... Everyone in the profession has their own secret. If we don't have a reputation, who will come to us? In any era, we need a brand, my dear!".

In Phong Yen village, there are 167 households specializing in making cakes (accounting for 60%). Some families do a lot, such as Mrs. Phuong Thai's family and Ms. Vien's family. On a normal day, they also make more than 100 kg of sticky rice and rice, both wholesale at home and bring to markets: Yen Thanh, Quynh Luu, Dien Chau to sell. Calculating the average income, each person making cakes also earns over 100,000 VND, while families that make less also earn 50,000 VND. Dien Dong commune is near Yen Thanh and Quynh Luu districts, so wholesale is quite convenient. Since 2010, Phong Yen village has been recognized by the Provincial People's Committee as a craft village, so it has become even more favorable.

Outside the alley, I saw a group of village children, aged 9 or 10, each holding a honey cake, eating it and chattering away. Looking at the innocent and carefree children, I remembered my childhood, when I also ate honey cakes made by my mother during Tet. When I was little, every Tet, the whole family gathered to wrap honey cakes, first to worship our ancestors, then to entertain guests. Every time we soaked sticky rice, my mother always made some extra sticky rice to wrap a few small, pretty cakes for my sisters and me. The fragrant aroma of the country sticky rice, beans, and coconut filling still lingers...

Thu Huong