Mrs. Xi’s donuts are nearly 40 years old, serving not only diners in Ky Anh town, but also tourists from all over the world.
The bakery of Mrs. Phan Thi Tap (73 years old) is located at her home in Ha Hoa street, Ky Anh town. Having existed for nearly 40 years, Mrs. Xi’s donuts have been associated with many people’s childhoods.
Every day, Mrs. Xi’s family sells several thousand cakes. The taste of Mrs. Xi’s donuts is loved by many diners in Ky Anh town as well as other localities, including many tourists from Nghe An, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Quang Ninh… Besides hot donuts When selling directly at home, she also makes cakes to supply orders from far away.
Ms. Xi said that when she was a child, she learned the baking technique from her mother. She was meticulously guided by her mother from choosing ingredients to baking. During the process of molding and frying cakes with her mother, her love for traditional family cakes grew.
“The fact that the cake is becoming more and more popular is the motivation for me to maintain it for a long time,” Ms. Xi said. In order to preserve the taste of donuts in the years to come, Mrs. Xi has been passing on the profession to her children.
In winter, the number of cakes sold is usually more than half that of summer because the donuts are hot, suitable for cold rainy weather. The cake is best eaten when it’s just finished frying and still hot, the crust is both crispy and flexible.
The baking space is the kitchen right at Mrs. Xi’s house. This area is always busy. To meet the demand of several thousand cakes per day, besides Mrs. Xi, the shop also has 5 assistants. People knead the dough, shape the fillings, the people fry the cakes, the people pack the cakes into boxes to be transported. While donuts are a more popular snack when it’s cold outside, Mrs. Xi’s cakes sell well year-round, regardless of winter or summer.
Ingredients for making donuts include glutinous rice flour, green beans, sugar and ginger. These ingredients are all selected by her to produce quality cakes. Glutinous rice is a delicious type of rice, which is ground into a water powder and then squeezed the water, taking the remaining flour to make cakes. This type of rice helps the finished cakes to be flexible, moderately soft, and at the same time not tough and dry if left for a long time. Green beans are steamed and then smoothed, then molded into round balls, about the size of two fingers.
After the ingredients are ready. The dough is kneaded into a cylinder about 5 cm long, wrapped with green bean paste inside before being fried.
In the kitchen, 4 frying pans operate at the same time to keep up with demand. Each molded cake is dropped into the boiling oil. The sizzling sound rang out continuously. To make the cake fragrant, there is also lard in the oil. The frying stage is considered by Mrs. Xi to be an important step in the process of creating delicious cakes.
Sitting for hours in front of the heat emanating from the stove, the bakers are always focused on observing, constantly turning the cake so that the crust is just cooked. After about 5 minutes, the cake turns dark yellow, fragrant and floats on the oil, then taken out and drained. A standard cake is a cake with a golden crust, crispy and not burnt.
Finished donuts will be soaked in a mixture of white sugar cooked with ginger. The outer layer of sugar dries up, creating a sweet, spicy aroma to increase the flavor of the cake. Each cake costs 3,000 VND.($1=24,000 VND)
When eating Mrs. Xi’s donuts, from the outside to the inside, diners in turn feel the sweet and spicy taste of sugar, the melted ginger, the fragrant sticky dough and the fatty taste of green beans. All blend together harmoniously. “Mrs. Tap’s donuts are not too sweet, so I don’t feel sick when I eat them. The taste is quite satisfying. I’ve been eating them since I was a kid,” Le Na (Ha Tinh) shared.
Photo: Internet (Vinlove.net)