My Long Rice paper cake village is one of the best places where you shouldn’t miss during the visit to Ben Tre. It has long been famous to tourists thanks to the simple yet tasty cakes. These bear the true love of the land and the locals living in this evergreen coconut land.
Even though everyone knows that the major ingredients to make the cakes are mainly sticky rice and husked rice, the makers still want to hold their secret recipe. This helps to keep them from getting leaked to the outsiders. But they love to update such recipes so that the finest cakes are produced to serve their customers around the world.
How to get to the village?
To get to the village, or reach My Thanh Commune, Giong Tom District in Ben Tre, simply follow the 885 provincial street. Next, you need to pass over the “Chet Say” Bridge to arrive in the place. Once reaching there, you will instantly encounter the long rows of rice paper cakes placed on the bamboo fence and along the roadsides in the beautiful sunshine.
As you know, people living in My Thanh Commune have always used the mashed white rice, mixing with coconut juice with spices of salt, sugar, and more. Then they will spread it thinly before steaming it into the round and beautiful cakes.
About My Long rice paper cakes
Once stepping into the yards of the household, everyone usually gets amazed by the white shade of the paper cakes covering the entire space. It comes from house to house. If going on the roadsides, it’s easy to spot the stalls selling a great variety of Ben Tre specialties. But the highlight is still the rice paper cakes that can be baked and left raw.
After spreading the cakes, the locals tend to place them on plates that are made from coconut leaves. Each cake needs to be dried enough so that it can turn to be crunchier and easier to get broken once being exposed to the sunlight. Later, it’s grilled on the burning coal while the maker is asked to turn over it constantly to make it well done.
Such sweet rice paper cakes once being toasted, they become yellow with a pretty delicate flavor. Not just that, they’re also crispy and delicious to chew. Meanwhile, salted cakes once getting well-toasted tend to own a fatty taste of coconut with a sweet taste of dried shrimp and eggs.
There are also rice paper cakes served with salad, boiled shrimp, roast pork, or fried fish would be the best choice to make at any party. For wet rice paper cakes, they will get dried and sliced into different pieces to be boiled. Some broth is put in to make beef noodles.
The whole process looks easy to do, but actually requires the skillful hands and the diligence of the cake makers. It’s called the great combination of tradition and love which makes My Long rice paper cakes so special and a favorite to many tourists.
Interestingly, My Long rice paper cakes own their unique taste, cultural, traditional, and national meaning in Vietnamese cuisine. Visitors from different parts of the world love to come to this craft village to bring big volumes of cakes back home as a gift for their relatives.
What to experience from the rice paper cake village
All locals here are quite hospitable, so once getting the offer from you and other visitors, they will happily accept and invite you in. Among them, Ms. Hong, a rice paper maker revealed that this work has been hundreds of years old till now since it’s an essential part of her family. It was inherited from generation to generation.
Making rice paper cake is not only for earning purpose but a hobby and interest of my family members. They decided not to let the career to be fallen into oblivion by the time. In this village, you’ll learn that everyone regardless of gender or age join in the entire making process. One thing that they share in common is how skillful they are.
But making these rice paper cakes is not just for earning purpose, but a big interest of every family member. They determined not to let this job to be fallen into oblivion by the time.
In fact, to make a perfect My Long rice paper cake, the process of selecting and mixing the powder will be the most crucial thing to do. And the rice powder is said to be the highlight to make the rice paper cake unique. Besides, the grain for powder should be fragrant, big and not too dry. How about the other ingredients such as sugar, sesame, and salt? They must be measured with the exact quantity.
The person who makes the cakes should use only hands and eyes to do that without any mistake. And the big secret is the coconut juice, a popular specialty of Ben Tre.
As said by the locals, the difference between My Long rice paper and that of other areas are the quality of the sticky rice and the concentration on the coconut juice. It must be the good coconut milk that is only found in My Long village.
