Pressed Cake: A Typical Food In Hue To Find The Difference

How is the pressed cake in Hue?

The pressed cake, which is called Bánh Ép in Vietnamese, is small and thin but contains enough plasticity, chewiness, sourness, spicy, saltiness, sweetness, fattiness, and fragrance to make anyone remember it once. That is the typical pressed cake of Hue City, Vietnam.

The main ingredient is tapioca filter flour. The cake sounds simple and popular, but it is not simple to transform it into a cake that attracts people’s hearts.

The filter powder selected for making pressed cakes must be new filter flour, which has been thoroughly kneaded so that the dough is nice white and limber, like glue in texture flexible, and does not have a sour taste.
Before being pressed, the dough is divided into small pellets in line with the pressing mold.

The chef will put a few pieces of chopped bacon marinated with spices on top of the dough. The meat chosen to make the pressed cake must be high in fat and low in lean meat so that when pressed, the fat in the meat flows out to make the cake delicious, and the piece of meat is not dry and hard.

The mold consists of two flat cast iron pans attached to each other through a flexible coupling that can be folded and opened. Above each pan’s back is a round, large, long iron bar carefully welded to serve as a pressing hander.

How to make a pressed cake?

Making this pressed cake takes a lot of time and requires many tools and ingredients. So, most locals come to the small shops of Banh Ep to taste it and see how they make it.

1. Before pressing the cake, people put the pressing mold on the fire for a long time to evenly heat the two sides of the cast iron pan.
2. Next, the baker will brush the two sides of the pan with a thin layer of cooking oil.
3. The dough ball is placed in the middle of the press. Squeeze the press with your hands so that the dough is pressed thinly and evenly across the face of the mold.
4. After pressing the dough thinly for about 20-30 seconds, the baker will open the mold again. At this point, the filter cake has become a relatively thin piece of cake and still has the white color of the dough. The fat in the bacon slice started flowing all over the cake.
5. The press continues adding chicken eggs or quail eggs mixed with chopped scallions to the cake. In some places, the owner adds a few fresh shrimp and a little pate to the cake to increase the delicious fatty flavor of the pressed cake.
6. After adding the eggs, the cake mold will be covered and pressed more tightly than at the beginning to achieve the maximum thickness of the cake. The presser holds the mold for about 10 seconds, then flips the mold over so that the cake is cooked evenly on both sides.

Two types and ways to eat Hue pressed cakes

Hue-pressed cakes have two forms: dry-pressed and plastic-pressed, also called wet-pressed.

• To have a wet cake, the presser only needs to hold the mold for another 10-15 seconds to have a soft, thin, clear, and sticky cake. Accompanying ingredients such as eggs, shrimp, and meat are thinly pressed with the just-cooked feature.
• With dry-pressed cake, the cake needs to be thicker, and the pressing time is longer until it is dry and crispy and the dough turns ivory white. Ingredients such as scallions, meat, and shrimp are also dry, turning yellow-brown on the surface of the cake.

Dry-pressed cakes have a long storage time and are convenient to take away. When eaten, they are crispy and melt in the mouth, fragrant with the smell of onion. They have a rich flavor. Diners can dip the cake in spicy chili fish sauce or eat it directly.

On the contrary, soft-pressed cake is delicious when it is still hot. Therefore, cakes will be pressed when ordered.

When eating wet pressed cakes, depending on each person’s preferences, add a few more laksa leaves, green papaya with sweet and sour carrots, and a few slices of cucumber. Some places even have salads for guests to eat. The cake is dipped with fish sauce mixed with spicy chili sauce.

Many Hue people believe that the fish sauce used to eat pressed cakes must be very spicy to be tasty.

When young Hue people eat pressed cake, they also add a little Tre (fermented pork) to the pressed cake roll. The spicy, mildly sour, fatty, and plump Tre of the pork skin is marinated and fermented thoroughly, making the cake even more delicious.

The Hue-pressed cake looks simple, but you will find its rich taste when eating it. Biting the piece of cake is sticky and tough on the teeth but soft, greasy, and fragrant. The flavor of fresh laksa leaves blends with papaya and sweet and sour carrots. Add a slight spiciness of chili. All make a perfect cake that fully awakens the taste of the eater.

Just that tiny cake is enough to make every person in Hue City, wherever they go, look forward to returning to enjoy their homeland’s simple pressed cake.

If you can visit Hue once, do not forget to try this snack. It is a loveable snack for many generations of young people in Hue; indeed, it is enough to cause nostalgia for friends worldwide.

Check famous addresses to taste Banh Ep in Hue City

Each Hue-pressed cake is cheap, ranging from 2,000 VND to 3,000 VND per cake. Diners can also buy dry-pressed cakes to take anywhere. The seller packs the dry cakes in plastic bags, with each bag of 10 cakes priced from 20,000 to 30,000 VND.

In Hue, there are many famous and delicious pressed cake shops, such as:

1. Gia Di pressed cake – 4 Phu Chi Kien Street, Hue City. Open from 2:30 pm – 9:00 pm
2. Sister Hue pressed cake – 116 Le Ngo Cat, Hue City. Open from 4:00 pm – 7:30 pm
3. Shop 20 Nguyen Du pressed cakes – 20 Nguyen Du, Hue City. Open from 4:00 pm – 10:00 pm
4. Cay Dua Pressed Cake Shop – 73 Tung Thien Vuong, Hue City. Open from 2:30 pm – 8:00 pm
5. Xi cake pressed – 107 Nhat Le, Hue City. Open from 9:00 am – 22:00

Please try this delicious and cheap local food of Hue City when you come to the ancient capital of Vietnam! Just once, you will fall in love with this press cake.