How to Make Simple and Easy Banh Tro at Home for the Doan Ngo Festival

How to make Tro Cake

• 1

  Soak glutinous rice

  You need to rinse the glutinous rice several times until it is clean, then remove it and place it in a bowl.

  Add 1 liter of water and 500ml of lye water to the bowl, and soak for 20-22 hours.

  Occasionally during soaking, you can test by gently squeezing a grain of glutinous rice; if it breaks slightly, it has soaked enough.

  After the glutinous rice has soaked in lye water, rinse it several times with cold water until it is clean. You can add a little salt (for 0.5 kg of rice, use 20gr of salt). Let the rice drain.

  
• 2

  Make mung bean filling

  Split mung beans have been peeled and cleaned, soak in warm water for about 1-2 hours to soften.

  Next, add the mung beans to a pot, add a little water and cook for about 30 minutes until the mung beans are soft (or you can also steam the mung beans until soft).

  When the mung beans are still hot on the stove, add 30g of sugar, use a wooden spoon to stir quickly to make the mung beans fine and fluffy, or you can put the mung beans in a blender, turn on the blending mode until the mixture is smooth.

  Put the mung bean mixture in a pan, stir over low heat until the surface is slightly dry. (Adjust sugar according to your preference for sweetness).

  Then turn off the heat, let it cool, and roll into round balls.

  

  

  
• 3

  Wrap the cake

  Normally, you can use bamboo leaves, dong leaves, or banana leaves to wrap the cake.

  You shape the leaves into a funnel, then add 1 tablespoon of sticky rice at the bottom, add the filling in the middle and then add 1 tablespoon of sticky rice on top.

  Roll the leaves together and use string or twine to tie tightly. Continue wrapping until you run out of rice.

  
• 4

  Boil the cake

  After wrapping the gio cake, you place it in a clean pot (note that the boiling pot must not have grease). Fill with water and boil for about 3 hours until the cake is tender. When you see the water level dropping, you can add more water so that the pot does not run out of water.

  When the cake is cooked, rinse it under cold running water and then hang it in a cool place.

  
• 5

  Make molasses to dip the gio cake

  You can put white sugar in a hot pan, simmer until the sugar melts into a golden brown liquid, the sugar completely dissolves, and becomes a thick syrup. Or if you have molasses available at home, you don’t need to cook it, just peel the gio cake and dip it in the molasses.

  
• 6

  Final product

  The gio cake has a chewy and fragrant outer layer, with a sweet mung bean filling. When eaten, dipping the gio cake in sweet molasses will make you want to eat it over and over!