Simple Guide to Making Delicious Honey Cake Pies at Home

Follow the recipe below to satisfy your craving for honey cake pies without needing to search for where to buy them!

Honey cake pies have been a cherished childhood treat for many teens in the Northern region. It's a special cake loved for its refreshing taste and sweet sugarcane flavor. However, in recent years, honey cake pies seem to have become less common. It's rare to see a vendor selling honey cake pies passing by, so we can't always enjoy this beloved treat whenever we want.

Today, PasGo - the first restaurant reservation app in Vietnam, will guide you on how to make them right at home!

Ingredients for Honey Cake Pies:

- Sticky Rice: 1kg

- Sugar, Salt

- Ash Water or Lye Water

- Small-sized dong leaves

- Bamboo strings

Recipe for Honey Cake Pies:

Step 1: Soak the rice

- Rinse the sticky rice thoroughly several times until clean, then soak it in a large pot of cold water with a little salt dissolved, soak for the first time is 5-6 hours.

- To make ash water, collect the thap nhap tree (a common type of tree in the mountainous provinces of the North) along with the fruit of the xoan tree and burn them to ashes. Then, filter and collect the liquid. However, you can also buy ready-made ash water. You can dilute ash water with water at a ratio of 1 tablespoon of ash water to 1 liter of filtered water.

- After soaking the rice with salt water, soak the sticky rice with ash water in the ratio above for 22 hours.

- You can check if the sticky rice is soaked enough by placing a grain of sticky rice between your thumb and index finger, gently press, if the rice grain breaks lightly, it means it is ready to make cakes.

- In case you soak glutinous rice with ash water, you need to rinse it several times with filtered water until clean, then add salt and toss to drain well. If soaking with lye water, after soaking, you just need to drain the rice.

Step 2: Wrapping the cakes

- Boil a large pot of water, blanch the dong leaves thoroughly to remove some chlorophyll from the leaves. Then, rinse them clean and let them drain.

- Place two leaves on a flat surface, place the right side of one leaf over the left side of the other. Scoop 2 tablespoons of rice evenly onto the leaves. Then roll the leaves, fold the excess leaf inward, and tie with string along the length of the cake. Continue wrapping until all the rice is used.

Step 3: Cooking the cakes

- Once the cakes are wrapped, place them in a clean pot. Make sure the pot is not greasy as the grease will prevent the cakes from cooking through. Fill the pot with water and simmer for about 2 - 2.5 hours until the cakes are tender. If you see the water running low, you can add more water to keep the pot from drying out.

- When the cakes are cooked, rinse them under cold water then hang them in a cool, airy place.

Step 4: Making sugarcane molasses dip for the cakes

- You can heat white sugar in a hot pan, simmer on low heat until the sugar melts into golden-colored liquid, completely dissolved, forming a thick syrup.

- Alternatively, simply dipping the cakes into white sugar is also delicious.

Final Product:

As the final layer of leaves is peeled away, the cake emerges like a block of amber, translucent, with each grain of sticky rice shimmering. When eating, dip the cake into a bowl of glossy golden sugarcane molasses, fragrant, then savor the unique flavor of the cake. Or, you can cut the cake into small pieces onto a plate and drizzle sugarcane molasses on top. Let's enjoy the traditional Vietnamese flavor with these authentic cakes!

Wishing you success with this honey cake recipe! And don't forget to visit PasGo.vn for many other useful tips!

Collected by Suong Mai - PasGo.vn