FLOWER COOKIES (Bánh Nhúng) | Helen's Recipes

Walking along the busy streets of Saigon, sometimes you run into these pop-up stores right on the street side selling some traditional Vietnamese sweet treats. The setup is very simple with a carrying pole with a burning charcoal stove on one end and a tray displaying the final products on the other. The seller makes the cakes right there when you order. This one is selling a kind of thin and There's another snack that I remember eating and loving a lot since a child but it's getting harder and harder to find these days. It's called Banh Nhung. It's a kind of crispy cookies in a flower shape. So today I will make it at home. Let's begin! The ingredients you're going to need. 75g of all-purpose flour, 50g of rice flour, 1 egg, 200ml of coconut milk, and 50g of sugar. Firstly, you want to combine the all-purpose flour and the rice flour in a large mixing bowl. Then dissolve the sugar in the coconut milk with a pinch of salt. Make a hole in the center and pour in the coconut milk mixture. Also crack in 1 egg and stir well until you get a smooth batter. Then let the batter rest for about 15 to 30 minutes. If you want to color the cookies, divide the batter into 3 small bowls. For the green color, mix 1 bowl with a few drops of pandan extract. For the red color, you can mix with a few drops of red food colorings. I'm using some homemade red food coloring made from red beets. The third bowl, you can leave it plain. Today I'm using 2 flour molds, about 6cm in diameter. You can buy these at the Vietnamese market or online. I will put the links below where you can get them. Heat a lot of vegetable oil in the pan at least 2 inches high until you stand a chopstick in the center and see bubbles appear around it. That's when the oil is hot enough. Then you turn the heat to very low and start frying. You want to submerge the molds into the hot oil first to prevent sticking and also to warm it up. Then lift up and gently shake off the excess oil. Quickly dip the molds into the batter. You just want to dip about 2 thirds of the molds into the batter because if you submerge the mold completely into the batter, it's gonna be very difficult to remove the cakes from the mold later. You will get a really thin layer of the batter sticking on the mold. Then quickly dip the mold into the hot oil. After a few seconds, the cake is gonna drop off the mold. And there you have a really pretty flower cookie. Fry until both sides are golden brown and place them on a paper towel to drain off the excess oil. Making these cookies are really so much fun. If the molds you're using are brand new, it could be sticky for the first one but after a few tries, you're gonna get the hands of it. The cookies look very soft in the hot oil but when you let it cool down completely, it will become very crispy. They taste the best freshly fried. You can sprinkle some powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar on top or you can also serve it with some ice cream or drizzles of some chocolate sauce. You can also store them in an airtight plastic container or a plastic bag and keep them for several days. Now listen to this. Very crispy. I hope you like this video and don't forget to click like and subscribe to my channel for more delicious Vietnamese food and Asian cakes. Thank you for watching. Bye bye.