Lẳng cake- a dish made by the Tay people during Tet holidays.

Once time visiting the land of Luong Son, Bao Yen district (Lao Cai), the land with proportion of the Tay people accounting for nearly 67% of total population, I had chance to enjoy Lẳng cake, with a cool taste of Glutinous rice mingled with sweet taste of molasses makes me impressed forever…

Lẳng cake, a dish that has been existed for a long time, was made by the Tay during Tet holidays, offerings such as then offering to ancestors and inviting guests when guests come to house. For the Tay people here, there may not be much meat in the tray, but the Lẳng cake dish is definitely must have, because they represent the fullness of the year.

In order to get a good Lẳng cake, the processor must go through quite a lot of stages. The first stage is to prepare the ash water. The Tay people do not wait until the day of making new cakes to prepare the ash water, but they prepare the ash water in their free work days. They gather leafy trees such as cassava, longan, grapefruit branches, sesame tree, fruits, grapefruit peel, banana leaves, even straw, then wash it and dry it to burn ashes.

According to experience of a long-time baker, if you want to make the cake that has nice red color, you have to take apricot bark, about 1-2 pieces of about 40 cm long, bring it to boil, then mix with water, to settle and then rinse well to get that water. Rice for making cake must be glutinous rice, best when using sticky rice yellow flowers. The grains of rice are washed, treated, used ashes to soak. Soak rice is both a process and experience. Rice is opaque white, pouring into soaking must change the ash water three times in about 9-10 hours, change water every 3 hours in order to get enough permeability of ash water into the rice, so that the rice grain color changing from opaque white to pale yellow with a bluish tinge, rubbing the hands and the rice is minced into a fine powder to be satisfied.

Cool taste of glutinous rice mingles with sweet taste of molasses to create a unique taste of Lẳng cake.

An indispensable thing to make success of this special dish is dong leaves. The leaves used to wrap the cakes must be the type of male leaves, which are small kind of dong leaves, with white stalks, often grown around house garden. If using ordinary dong leaves to wrap, it will not produce a golden color and become sticky. Notably, the dong leaves before wrapping must be boiled to soft then washed to create softness and not to tear during packaging. After wrapping, use your hands to roll over the cake so that the cakes will not be sticky to the leaves.

Lẳng cake after being wrapped will be brought to the kitchen and boiled. To achieve the deliciousness, the Tày people will use it completely with fire stove. The cake is put into a large pot and boiled within 4 hours, during boiling process of the cake, after spending the first 2 hours, the next time every 30 minutes, the boiled cake must be opened to see once to observe the smoothness of the cake. Unlike square sticky rice cake, if it is boiled over time, it will melt, Lẳng cake will be boiled as long as better because sticky rice will create a sticky glue that links the rice grains together, creating a delicious taste that is hard to resist this cake.

An indispensable thing when enjoying Lẳng cake is honey used to dip cakes. The type of honey used by the Tày people here is usually molasses. To create this type of honey, the Tay can do it in two ways. The first is cooking sugar to make molasses, the second way is to use the juice from white sugar to refill the honey, usually molasses of sugarcane is used in order to better taste than the sugar. In the process of cooking honey, the cook must pay attention to that the honey is not young or burnt, if young honey will become sugar, the overheated honey will be burnt. This kind of honey when eaten with cake will have a cool, refreshing taste creating typical inherent flavor of this traditional cake.

After being boiled, the cakes are taken out and placed on a basket or hung in bundles to dry out, usually Lẳng cake will be kept for about 1 week when stored in the refrigerator. Especially, this cake is often “sold out” in the New Year. On New Year, people eat a lot of meat and drink a lot of alcohol, so they rush and feel hot in stomach, then the coolness of pieces of Lẳng cakes with molasses will melt the boredom of meat and help us become more alert after funny drinking sessions with brothers and friends.

Over time, the Tay Bao Yen people today still keep the tradition of making Lẳng cakes during Tet and holidays. If you have the opportunity to visit the villages of the Tay, one time enjoying Lẳng cake to feel special taste of the cuisine of the Tày people in general and the Tày people in Bao Yen in particular.