Banh Tai Heo Recipe - Vietnamese Pig’s Ear Cookies

Pig’s ear cookies are a favorite snack of many Vietnamese people. The cookies are called “Pig’s ear” not because it is made from pig’s ears, but the shape of the cake looks like pig’s ears, its shape is thin, round slices with swirling stripes including milky white and light brown colors. The cake is made from main ingredients including flour, sugar, condensed milk, chicken eggs, butter, vanilla (to create a delicious taste), cooking oil, salt, water … and fried. The cake is salty, sweet, crispy, dry.

These cookies are cooked by frying method. Accordingly, ingredients such as chicken egg white, sugar and flour will be mixed and shaped into a piece of white cake and then it will be mixed, stuffed and rolled. The other ingredients including chicken egg yolk, sugar, whipped milk, flour, vanilla and butter will be used to form a brown cake, these ingredients will be mixed, stuffed and rolled again. Next, two pieces of flour (white and brown) are overlapped, and rolled into thin slices and dipped a little sesame and cooked in the fried oil.

Although it sounds difficult to cook, the recipe of pig’s ear cookies is not complicated, you just need to prepare some simple ingredients as mentioned above and follow the steps as instructed below.

II. Ingredients for making Pig’s ear cookies

150gr flour
40ml coconut milk or non-sugar fresh milk or cold water.
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp of cocoa powder
A pinch of salt
20gr soft butter
1 teaspoon of lemon juice
50gr of sugar

II. Steps for making Pig’s ear cookies

Step 1: Add flour, salt, sugar, egg yolks, lemon juice, butter and coconut milk into a bowl, use gloves to make a smooth dough (keep the dough not too flabby)

Step 2: Divide the dough into 2 parts (rate: 6-4). Mix the smaller one and cacao flour to make brown color.

Step 3: Roll the white and brown parts.

Step 4: Put the brown dough on the white part, then roll up.

Put the rolled dough in a refrigerator for 2 hours to make dough hard. Then, slice thinly. Note: the cookies should not be cut too thinly to avoid being broken.

Step 5: Put a pan with cooking oil on the cooker, do not need too much oil. When the oil starts boiling, add each piece of dough to fry over medium heat.