The amazing palm sugar honeycomb cake of Bay Nui

The famous palm sugar honeycomb cake is the favorite dish of the Southwest region’s people. The cake is made with rice flour, doum palm fruit powder (doum palm fruit peel powder mixed with rice flour), palm sugar, and coconut milk. The cake is golden, wrapped in banana leaves and sprinkled with scraped coconut.

Itʼs a great feat to make this Bay Nui speciality. From the fermenting process of flour, choosing the suitable doum palm fruit, choosing natural sugars, and adding some coconut milk so that the steamed cake will have a natural yellow color and a delicious and special taste.

When making the cake, the first step is mixing a little Vietnamese fermented sticky rice with Nang Nhen rice flour to stimulate the fermentation process. Hence, the final product will also have the special smell of wine. Next, palm sugar along with doum palm fruit powder and coconut milk will be mixed with the rice flour one by one. The baker will then add a little water and mix all the ingredients in a measured ratio. When the ingredients are well mixed, the dough will be kept until the next day and then divided into small molds to be steamed. The molds are usually small, either round or square. When the water in the pot has boiled and is hot enough, the cake will then be steamed. The freshly steamed cake are very soft, the clear fatty taste of coconut milk mixing with the sweetness of sugars is truly exceptional.

For a long time, palm sugar honeycomb cake used to be a snack of the people of An Giang but has now become a gift for tourists to bring home for their family.

Tran Loi

(Vietnam Today 7.2022)