Bánh ít Cù Lao Chàm Bánh ít Cù Lao Chàm
Bánh ít is sticky rice and ramie leaf, black outside and yellow with mung bean inside, lightly sweet, soft, and chewy, with a nutty bean. The salty cake adds carrot and sometimes pork.
Food tours Bánh ít Cù Lao Chàm Search a food tour or a cooking class for this dish.
Search on KlookWhy it matters
Families used to make the cake at Tết, with bánh in, bánh tét, bánh nổ, bánh da, and bánh thuẩn, and the origin of the trade is not fixed. Makers now steam hundreds a day in summer for visitors.
Texture
The cooked cake is black outside and yellow inside, soft and chewy, and keeps about two or three days. Ramie leaf is boiled, ground, and kneaded with sticky-rice flour and a sugar syrup. The filling is pounded mung bean. The wrap is a four-sided banana-leaf packet, steamed about one hour, or for as long as one incense stick.
Taste
The leaf is lightly sweet and chewy, and the mung bean is nutty and fragrant. The salty cake adds crisp carrot and wood ear, and sweet, chewy pork, to that mung bean.
How to enjoy it
Eat it as a sweet, or take it from the baskets. The salty cake, also called bánh ít lạt, and a peanut vegetarian cake are the variants. The salty cake is made when someone orders it.
On 28 September 2015 the cake was 15,000 to 20,000 VND for ten. A 25 November 2014 count was five cake households in the commune, three of them for this cake. A 2015 count was about four households.
Where to try it
Bai Lang and Bai Ong. Baskets of bánh ít, bánh su sê, and the salty cake also sit at the pier.