Some have been in business for nearly 80 years, while others have been making cakes using family recipes for more than half a century.

Each Mid-Autumn season, regular customers return not only for the cakes but also for a taste of memories from years past.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, known as Tet Trung Thu in Vietnam, is traditionally celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar.

Often associated with children, the festival features lanterns, lion dances and family gatherings, with mooncakes and other sweet treats among its most iconic traditions.

This year's Mid-Autumn Festival falls on September 25.

These days, long-established bakeries across Cho Lon, which spans parts of for Districts 5, 6 and 11, are busy making cakes for the Mid-Autumn season.

At some shops, customers wait for fresh batches to come out of the oven, while others make cakes only to order and sell them as soon as they are ready.

Amid an increasingly diverse Mid-Autumn cake market, Chinese bakeries continue to preserve family recipes, familiar ingredients and flavors passed down through generations.

For many families, these cakes remain familiar gifts for relatives and loved ones during the full moon season.

Nearly 80 years of preserving the flavor of Teochew-style pia cakes

Among Cho Lon’s long-established bakeries, Trieu Minh Hiep has its own way of marking the Mid-Autumn season.

Rather than making the familiar baked and snow-skin mooncakes, the shop keeps its ovens running with batches of pia cakes in the Teochew style.

Trieu An, a third-generation member of the family, said the shop has a history spanning nearly 80 years.

In the 1940s, his family began selling confectionery from street carts before opening the shop in 1948 and continuing the family’s baking trade ever since.

The shop’s signature pia cakes feature flaky layers of pastry filled with taro or mung bean paste and salted egg yolk.

Most of the process is still done by hand, with the first batches usually coming out of the oven at around 9:00 am. 

“The hardest part of making these cakes is preserving the family flavor,” An said.

“Machines can help with some steps, but many parts still have to be done by hand to get the cake just the way we want it.”

Pia cakes are not traditionally classified as Mid-Autumn cakes, but for many Teochew families, they are a familiar treat during the season.

Some buy them for family gatherings, while others give them as gifts. As a result, Trieu Minh Hiep sees a significant increase in customers during the Mid-Autumn season.

Regular customers in Ho Chi Minh City place orders in advance, along with orders shipped to Hanoi, Hai Phong, central Vietnam and the Mekong Delta.

As the shop does not use preservatives, customers often prefer to receive the cakes fresh from the oven.

Inside the bakery, workers who have been with the shop for decades, many now in their 60s, continue to roll dough, prepare fillings, shape the cakes and bake them.

The younger generation of the family has also begun taking over the business.

An’s son, born in 1998, handles sales and marketing and promotes the products on social media, helping the traditional cakes reach more younger customers.

Family bakeries face a generational shift

At Quang Nguyen Long, the story of traditional cakes is closely tied to a family-run approach that has remained largely within the household. 

The bakery has been in the trade for about 65 years, with the family maintaining the business since before 1975.

From the way the cakes are made to the molds and box designs, many old details have been preserved over the years.

The shop does not pursue large-scale production and mainly makes cakes to order.

The family produces as much as it can manage, with cakes sold as soon as they come out of the oven.

“I make them the way I would eat them myself,” owner Tran Le Phuong, 65, said.

“Working according to what the family can handle is tiring, but the cakes are always fresh when they come out of the oven, and customers can feel more at ease eating them.”

What concerns Phuong most is passing the trade on to the next generation.

Her children have pursued careers in other fields and have no plans to continue the family bakery.

After spending most of her life making cakes, she worries that one day there may be no one left to inherit the shop.

New flavors added

Dong Ky is another familiar destination for customers each Mid-Autumn season in Cho Lon area.
Quang Huy, a representative of the bakery, said his family has been in the baking trade for more than 30 years.

His father, a Teochew man, developed the recipes himself before opening the shop in 1990.

The bakery mainly sticks to traditional methods and focuses on using real ingredients without excessive flavoring.

Familiar flavors such as mixed filling, coconut and mung bean remain among the most popular choices.

This year, alongside its traditional fillings, Dong Ky has added pineapple and taro fillings.

Huy said the new flavors are intended to give younger customers more choices without replacing the cake varieties that longtime customers have come to know.

The additions offer a way for the traditional bakery to refresh its products while retaining the flavors customers have long associated with the shop.

Each Mid-Autumn season, the shop also prepares small lanterns to give to children who come to buy cakes.

While adults choose cakes as gifts or for their families, the lanterns add to the festive atmosphere outside the shop and evoke familiar Mid-Autumn memories from years past.