One of my favorite Vietnamese desserts is bánh da lợn, a colorful green and yellow steamed layer cake. You can easily spot this dessert at a Vietnamese bakery by its beautiful alternating layers of yellow and green.
This cake is made up of a base mixture of rice flour, glutinous rice flour, tapioca starch, coconut milk and sugar. The mixture is then equally divided into two, and flavored with pandan for the green layer and sweetened mung bean paste for the yellow layer. It’s then steamed, layer by layer.
It’s not overly sweet like other desserts. It’s springy, chewy, and slightly sticky. It’s the perfect dessert to satisfy a sweet craving without the sugar rush. Best of all, it’s so much fun to eat. You can separate the layers of the cake and enjoy each layer one by one, which is what I love and must do every time I have this cake.
I introduced this cake to my daughter recently and she too loves it. She pulls off a layer, gives it a jiggle, then pops it in her mouth, just like mommy.
You don’t need a Vietnamese bakery to enjoy bánh da lợn. If you have the time (and a steamer basket and blender), it’s actually quite simple to make at home. Most of the time is spent waiting for each layer to finish steaming. Other than that, it’s a piece of cake. Pun intended.
There are popular tweaks to the traditional cake. Some cakes use durian instead of mung bean for the yellow layer. Some use taro for an additional purple layer. I’m sticking to the traditional cake below. Happy steaming!
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