By Genevieve Ko, The New York Times
Last May, Hannah Pham hosted her mother and her mother’s three sisters in Los Angeles, where she was working with her husband, the comedian and actor Ronny Chieng. She baked them bánh bò nướng, the special occasion cake she loved growing up in Melbourne, Australia. The women, who were tasting Pham’s version for the first time, expressed their doubts about whether the cake would be any good. Even though Pham’s mother doesn’t make the cake herself, she had a “bánh bò lady” she called with orders.
After years of refining her recipe, Pham was confident enough in her cake to serve it to her elders. They were “so impressed,” she said, their skeptical clucking transformed to high praise, their expressions of happy surprise caught on camera. Pham first wanted to learn how to make this cake because she remembered the great ones neighborhood aunties made for community potlucks.
Known in English as honeycomb cake for its interior pattern of holes, stretched long like yawns, bánh bò nướng is tinted jade from pandan paste, which flavors the coconut milk batter. Glossy green pandan leaves, from which the paste is extracted, impart a scent that hovers like jasmine and vanilla with a grounding of soft herbs and toasted rice. The mix of tapioca starch and rice flour yields a texture that’s stretchy, sticky and soft.
Pham cherishes it as comfort food, but she now knows that anyone she gives it to, whether or not they’ve tried it before, experiences the squishy sweet as delight.
“I just like spreading joy,” Pham said, both of her work as an executive producer in comedy, television and film alongside Chieng, and of sharing good food. When she’s not touring with her husband, she hosts supper clubs and brings this cake to parties. She began cooking seriously only in 2016 when she moved to New York. Homesick for the excellent Vietnamese food in Melbourne, where her parents and older siblings had relocated as refugees in 1978 and where she was born, Pham taught herself her favorite dishes and started a cooking blog.
In 2019, Pham posted a video and recipe for bánh bò nướng, but perfected it only in the last few years. To achieve a tall, even rise, she uses double-acting baking powder and avoids overwhisking the eggs, which can cause the cake to collapse. Passing the ingredients through a sieve at every stage — mixing the flours, whisking the eggs, stirring the finished blend — ensures an airy, even honeycomb inside.
On top of figuring out a foolproof batter, Pham added her own touch by creating a crisp outer crust. She switched to a Bundt pan so there would be more of the browned shell in each bite and, to make the exterior even more caramelized, cut down on the amount of butter brushed over the heated pan. Even though her crackly crisp shell stands out, Pham said, “my version isn’t wildly different from the classic.”
It may even be closer to earlier iterations of bánh bò nướng. According to historian Vu Hong Lien, the author of “Rice and Baguette: A History of Food in Vietnam,” the term “bánh bò nướng” was in an official Vietnamese dictionary in 1895, and the term bò was defined as “crawling” to describe how dough crawls up the sides of a bowl. Bánh means cake and nướng translates to “grill,” usually referring to cooking over charcoal, which was how most dishes were traditionally prepared.
Both traditional Vietnamese cakes and the French gateaux that colonizers brought to the region were cooked over charcoal in pans, pots or metal molds covered with metal lids that balanced hot coals. That close, enveloping heat may have given the cakes browned, crisp crusts.
In the 1960s, some cooks switched to baking cakes when portable aluminum-box ovens were introduced to homes in Vietnam. Beginning in the late 1970s, some Vietnamese refugees who moved to Australia, Britain, Canada, France and the United States used Western-style ovens for cakes. Even before the changes in kitchen appliances, there was never a single way to make bánh bò nướng.
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“The thing is, that each cook has their own recipe and varies only slightly from the original,” Lien said. “That is why bánh bò nướng from each village is different from the next. That’s the best. It’s actually the cook’s recipe, really.”
Pham’s cake may not taste exactly like the ones her mother ordered for years, but it is indisputably an excellent rendition — and the one her mother now prefers. It’s so good, Pham has been anointed the “bánh bò lady,” creating tastes of home even when she’s half a world away.
Bánh Bò Nướng (Honeycomb Cake)
Recipe from Hannah Pham
Adapted by Genevieve Ko
Known in English as honeycomb cake for its interior pattern of holes stretched long like yawns, bánh bò nướng is tinted jade from pandan paste, which flavors the coconut milk batter. Glossy green pandan leaves, from which the paste is extracted, impart a scent that hovers like jasmine and vanilla with a grounding of soft herbs and toasted rice. The mix of tapioca starch and rice flour yields a texture that’s stretchy, sticky and soft. Hannah Pham’s take on this Vietnamese classic includes a crisp outer crust. She uses a Bundt pan so there’s more of the browned shell in each bite and, to make the exterior even more caramelized, cut down on the amount of butter brushed over the heated pan. For a foolproof cake, she calls for double-acting baking powder, avoids over whisking the eggs and passes the batter through a sieve. — Genevieve Ko
Yield: One Bundt cake; about 12 servings
Total time: About 2 hours, plus cooling
Ingredients
2 cups/254 grams tapioca starch (see Tips)
1/4 cup/38 grams rice flour (see Tips)
1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
6 large eggs
1 1/3 cups/283 grams granulated sugar
1 (14-ounce) can/390 grams full-fat coconut milk, well-shaken
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) or 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon pandan paste (see Tips)
3/4 tablespoon cold unsalted butter
Preparation
1. Arrange a rack in the center of the oven and put a 9 1/2-inch nonstick Bundt pan on it (see Tips). Heat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Set a sieve over a large bowl and add the tapioca starch, rice flour and baking powder to it. Whisk the dry ingredients until they’re all sifted through.
3. Set the same sieve over another large bowl. Crack the eggs into it and break the yolks with a whisk, then slowly whisk the eggs clockwise until they all run through the sieve. Add the sugar, coconut milk, oil, salt and pandan paste to the sieved eggs and stir slowly with the whisk until smooth. Whisk gently throughout so as to not create too many air bubbles, which can cause the cake to sink.
4. Set the sieve over the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients, whisking them through the sieve as needed to help the mixture pass through. Using the whisk, gently stir together the dry and wet ingredients until combined. Pour the batter through the sieve into the other bowl, whisking if needed to help it go through. Repeat the sieving two more times, going from one bowl to the other.
5. Pull the rack with the hot Bundt pan out of the oven and drop the butter into the pan. Use a pastry or silicone brush to spread the butter over the inside of the pan, then immediately pour in the batter. Lay a sheet of foil on top of the pan without crimping the edges.
6. Bake for 45 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for 45 minutes longer, or until the top is browned and a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then use a rubber spatula to nudge the edges away from the pan. Carefully flip the cake onto a rack.
7. Cool completely, then slice into 1/2-inch-thick wedges to serve. The cake tastes best when served the same day, but keeps for up to 2 days in an airtight container at room temperature.
Tips
Tapioca starch is commonly used in Asian desserts. The Erawan brand works especially well here. Other brands available outside Asian groceries will not result in a successful cake.
Rice flour comes in many different grinds and varieties. For this cake, you want very finely ground white rice flour, ideally the Erawan brand in the packaging with the red print. You should not use brands of rice flour available outside Asian groceries or glutinous rice flour, sticky rice flour or mochiko.
Pandan paste is extracted from pandan leaves, which have a floral flavor similar to vanilla with a heady aroma like jasmine. The paste is a concentrated version of the flavoring, which also provides an intense green color to this cake.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.