A public over the moon about festival snacks
Print Edition
IT’S that time of year: the moon grows fuller, the air takes on cool whiffs of autumn and our sweet tooth turns to mooncakes.
Mooncakes are a quintessential part of celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on September 15 this year. The custom of eating the cakes dates back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907), though no one is quite certain how they tasted back then.
Today they come in an array of recipes.
Traditional mooncakes, ones now called Beijing-style, are zi lai hong (light brown) and zi lai bai (white). For modern appetites, they can be heavy.
As tastes change, the recipes for mooncakes evolve. Fruit fillings that were quite popular about a decade ago have fallen out of favor because of their intense sweetness.
Many restaurants and pastry brands have developed new recipes that alter the appearance and taste of mooncakes and perhaps tantalize foodlovers.
One interesting turn is the crayfish mooncake offered by the Wang Bao He Hotel. It has become the big hit on the Internet this summer, attracting long lines of customers.
The crayfish mooncake combines two favorite foods — the flavorful crayfish and the flaky pastry crust of Suzhou-style mooncakes. Each mooncake contains the meat of four shelled crayfish and Chinese thirteen spice mix. This mooncake has a special crayfish red stamp on the top.
Cleaning the crayfish and removing the shells is labor-intensive work, which is why each mooncake costs 15 yuan (US$2.25), or 180 yuan for a boxed dozen.
If that already sounds a bit expensive, consider the fact that the limited supply of these mooncakes has driven the price up to more than 300 yuan a box when purchased through “middlemen.” Customers are restricted to two boxes at a time.
Another holiday treat attracting a lot of attention this season is Sunya Cantonese Restaurant’s yan du xian mooncake. It is inspired by the traditional Shanghai dish of the same name, which is actually a rich pork soup made with Jinhua ham, Chinese bacon and bamboo shoots.
The yan du xian mooncake is based on the Suzhou-style pork mooncake, adding fresh pork, ham and bamboo shoots to the filling. The mooncake actually contains some soup, similar to the soup dumplings, and has the same umami flavor.
The yan du xian mooncake is priced at 6 yuan each, and each buyer is limited to two boxes of six because of high demand.
Not to be outdone, KFC is also joining the mooncake party this year. The fast-food franchise in China is offering a new pork mooncake, priced at 7.5 yuan each. The mooncake has the same filling as the traditional Suzhou-style pork mooncake, but the crust is more like that of a pie — layered and crunchy. It’s not oily at all.
The KFC mooncakes may be a quick fix to satisfy hunger, but they would be so much more fun if they contained the signature fried chicken bites as fillings.
Temples in Shanghai are selling vegan mooncakes that contain no animal fat. Traditional vegetarian mooncakes usually have sweet, nutty fillings, but Yufo Temple is offering a savory shitake mushroom mooncake, with a filling of monkey-head and shitake mushrooms. This mooncake sells for 8.5 yuan apiece and has a shelf life of only seven days.
Durian mooncake was created for people who love the “king of fruits,” even with the distinctive odor.
Because the flesh of mature durian is already creamy and thick, it is used directly as filling.
The snowy-skin durian mooncake, sold by multiple vendors, features the strong aroma of top quality durian and a filling that’s very rich and creamy. This mooncake is best served chilled, and the average price is around 30 yuan apiece.
Chocolate mooncake was a trailblazer when the mooncake repertory began expanding. It’s been around for about a decade. These mooncakes remain public favorites.
Belgian chocolatier Godiva makes different chocolate mooncakes every year. This year, Godiva created four chocolate mooncakes.
They all have delicious-sounding names, like apple-cherry dark chocolate mooncake, orange cranberry mini-milk chocolate mooncake, and sea salt hazelnut milk chocolate cake mooncake.
A chocolate mooncake gift box of nine pieces costs 458 yuan, and 16 pieces cost 658 yuan.
Meixin Cakes of Hong Kong is known for its wide selection of mooncakes, like lotus seed paste with egg yolk and egg custard mooncakes.
This year, the company has created a lava chocolate mooncake that’s similar to the chocolate lava cake, with runny chocolate sauce in the middle when heated in the microwave. A box of four retails for 168 yuan.
A close relative of the chocolate mooncake is the ice cream mooncake, made by large ice cream franchises like Häagen-Dazs and Iceason. These mooncakes are mostly ice cream in the shape of a mooncake.
Häagen-Dazs’s mooncake is more expensive than others. Its rose mooncake collection features seven ice cream mooncakes in different flavors, including vanilla, strawberry, chocolate and coffee. It retails for 888 yuan per box. There is also the ice cream sandwich mooncake collection, which costs 358 yuan for six pieces.
Iceason is offering low-calorie mooncakes this year. Each piece boasts only 161 calories, which is lower than most mooncakes on the market. Prices range from 178 to 388 yuan per box, which contain either six or eight pieces.
Ganso is selling ice cream mooncakes as well. Its product is essentially chocolate, vanilla or maple syrup ice cream wrapped in a crunchy cookie shell. A box of 12 retails for 238 yuan on Ganso’s company website.
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