Traditional sticky rice cakes wrapped in leaves

One of my first posts on this blog was about popular Vietnamese sticky rice cakes wrapped in different kinds of leaves, we have typical cakes for Lunar New Year, or other festival occasions. I never check in details how many kinds of cake we have, how we name them according to the different areas, provinces, traditions...but I'm sure the list could be long enough to remember.

By chance I found this street vendor at the Hoa Binh market in district 5, not far from my place, she's selling several kinds of cakes: from the famous "bánh tét" filled with banana (my all time favourite!), with sweet green mung bean, or green mung bean with meat without fat or with fat, "bánh ít", "bánh bá trạng", bánh cúng nước cốt dừa"...I tried them all, and I have to say they are very good, very tasty and rich of coconut flavour, because this vendor from Bến Tre - the land of coconut trees, famous with their coconut candies.

          Dì Tư Hà - from Bến Tre with her cakes wrapped in leaves in Hòa Bình market, early in the morning. 

Sticky rice cake in southern style (bánh tét)

I was born in Saigon. I'm a southern Vietnamese. So, to me - this sticky rice cake in southern style is something that I love to buy regardless of time or need. As we say "Just buy!"
I love this bánh tét - a sticky rice cake in cylinder shape, sometime big and long, sometime shorter and slimmer, I do prefer not too small as the quality is far from good!

           Bánh tét in Mekong Delta, more colorful and with salted egg yolk! 

            Traditional bánh tét - filled with simple but tasty mung beans paste! 

Talking about this savory (and sometime sweet flavor) cake - we have a legend which related to our first King, thousands of years ago! The cake is a symbol of the Heaven, and another one, also sticky rice cake but in square shape, from the North, symbolized the Earth! This is a good educational story for children to remember our history! We learn it when we were kids and it's quite easy to find, this story, in many site about Vietnamese traditional food!

                 Bánh tét with banana - my favorite, I bought from Cần Thơ market - Mekong Delta

Another different thing between bánh tét and bánh chưng - not the shape, not the ingredients (as both cakes - made of sticky rice, filled with green bean paste, pork meat...bánh tét can be filled with sweet green bean paste or beautiful sweet banana - bánh chưng seems more conservative - never has sweet taste!

             Bánh chưng - another sticky rice cake in square shape - northern style. 

               Bánh chưng in northern style - very loyal to the original taste...

                always filled with green mung bean and pork.