With unique flavor, the wormwood cake is made for daily meals or to treat guests on special occasions, New Year holidays, or for traditional rituals of the Tay people.
Making a delicious and beautiful wormwood cake, which is to appraise the ingenuity of Tay women, requires special skills. Therefore, every family pays much attention to teaching their daughters how to make the cake to offer to ancestors and to treat parents, relatives and guests when they get married.
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Wormwood cakes are made from sticky rice and wormwood leaves. |
“Choosing ingredients plays an important role. It requires glutinous rice with large and round grains. Young wormwood leaves are better than old ones which are tough and bitter. In addition, it’s necessary to have granulated sugar, black sesame and beeswax. The processing is the most important stage, which needs much experience to blend ingredients together for a fragrant, smooth and shiny cake,” said Nong Thi Tien, a resident in Ban Moi village, Nam Cuong commune, Cho Don district, Bac Kan province, who has been making cakes for decades.
These simple-looking cakes actually undergo plenty of steps. After being soaked overnight, the glutinous rice is put into a steaming pot to turn into sticky rice. The heat must be constantly intense so that the grains will be perfectly round and well cooked. Wormwood leaves are cleaned and boiled in clear lime water in order to keep the green color. After the cooked leaves are squeezed to get rid of all the water, they are finely chopped and stir-fried on a cast iron pan. As for the filling, the black sesame seeds are roasted, pounded and then fried with the granulated sugar.
The level of sweetness and lightness depends on people’s tastes. The filling can also be added with roasted peanuts or stir-fried with lard. When the sticky rice is ready, it’s mixed with wormwood leaves, and then quickly pounded. Tay women then apply a little beeswax or lard on their palms to roll the thin crust out, put sesame paste into it, and mold it into beautiful cakes.
According to Nong Thi Tien, a perfect cake has a natural glossy green color outside and soft, supple and sweet filling inside. The finished cake is wrapped in phrynium or banana leaves to prevent them from drying out.
The Tay people love the wormwood cake not only because of its delicious flavor but also its benefits to the health. Wormwood leaves are a type of medical herb used to treat headaches, insomnia, sedation and flu. Thanks to the clever combination of ingredients, the Tay people have created delicious cakes instead of bitter ones with the smell of sticky rice, sesame and wormwood leaves. Traditionally, the Tay people make the cake on occasions like harvest praying ceremony, new rice celebration, death anniversary and New Year celebration. The familiar ingredients under the skilled hands have become the regional specialty and the speciality of the Tay culinary culture.
Translated by Huong Giang