Mung Bean Baked Cake – A Specialty – A Taste of Hanoi

According to tradition, on Mid-Autumn night, the women in the house will show off their skills in making cakes and preparing a moon-viewing feast. After that, all the family members will sit together, enjoy tea, eat cakes, watch the moon, and chat about life stories. That is the moment that is both bustling yet very peaceful for every family.

Baked mooncake is a type of pastry with a golden-brown color, the aroma of burnt sugar blended with fillings that are moderately sweet, nutty, and rich. The crust is usually made of wheat flour brushed with egg yolk to create a glossy, fragrant, golden-brown finish. The filling inside is mung bean mixed with nutty, creamy, and enticing melon seeds. The traditional mixed filling usually contains sugar-marinated pork fat, char siu, ham, Chinese sausage, sesame, candied winter melon, melon seeds, and more importantly, a spice that, while not needed in large quantities, is essential: lime leaves. The slightly pungent yet sweet aroma of lime leaves blended with the strong scent of Mai Que Lo wine is one of the secrets to keeping the soul of the cake and warming the eater's heart on a cold autumn night.

Because it contains many ingredients, the baked mooncake filling is usually a harmony of savory and sweet. This suggests that in life, no matter how much bitterness or hardship one may experience daily, there will always be loved ones by our side, enveloping us and giving us the sweetness of love.

Bao Minh makes baked mooncakes not only for the Mid-Autumn Festival night but has also transformed this popular pastry into an everyday snack. In the past, people made the cakes by hand, but today, Bao Minh has applied modern machinery, equipment, and technology to produce cakes with consistent quality, large output, and ensured food safety and hygiene to meet the increasingly widespread demands of the domestic and export markets.