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. 

            I would bet anyone in Saigon know how to call this cake!  

               and this one - what's the name? 

             Bánh ít filled with green mung bean and the red one - with coconut.

             Bánh ít filled with coconut shreds, very sticky, hard to keep it in good shape for the photo!  

           and here the coconut filling - very tasty, not so sweet. 

                Bánh ít filled with a bit sweet green mung bean. 

            Bánh tét - with green mung bean, pork meat, with fat or without fat - your choice! 

As Bến Tre is so famous for their coconut, so bánh tét - also quite rich with this flavour, which is not typical for other areas, I got one without fat, but very tasty due to the coconut flavour, so they should have soaked the sticky rice overnight in the coconut milk.

           Bánh tét with banana, with some beans, sweet and tasty. 

                 Hope you already know how to call this cake, how it tastes... bánh cúng nước cốt dừa 

  Bánh cúng nước cốt dừa - rice powder cake, very rich of the coconut milk flavour, a bit sweet! 

           and this cake - this is not bánh ú as I thought - they call bánh bá trạng (is it right?) 

       

              filled with green mung bean, salted egg yolk, dried shrimps - very delicious. 

        Bánh bá trạng - with red or blue or yellow strings, are different in taste and in price!  

First I thought this woman is selling here only every Sunday morning, but when I asked her this morning, surprisingly she is in business every day but at different markets!
Monday she will be at Tân Định market; Tuesday - Bàn Cờ market; Wednesday - Nhật Tảo; Friday - back to Tân Định, Saturday - back to Bàn Cờ and Sunday - at Hòa Bình market! Quite good sale strategy, to spread the market!
So if you want to try, select one of the above markets, near to your place, and go there early morning, you will surely catch a smiling woman with all kinds of cakes in leaves. Or you can call her at this number - Dì Tư Hà - 0908 123859 (or tel - 075 3820395)