Moon Cake

The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated and enjoyed each year in China, Taiwan, and among the diaspora thereof. It falls midway through the harvest season — "the Chinese believe that the moon is at its fullest and brightest, coinciding with the time of harvest in the middle of autumn." ^[1] So, among the many staples of the festivities is a delicacy called Moon Cake.

^{a pretty and reusable decorative tin! 😃}

I'd heard of Mooncakes long ago, but didn't give them much thought, especially since I did not live in an area where they were readily available. Every year, though, @kerrislravenhill looks forward to snagging a few to enjoy and mentions them in the LadiesOfHive server on Discord. Her photos and talking about them began to pique my interest. 🤔

Since ordering unusual things online has become so much easier in recent years, I decided to see if I could get a sample of a Mooncake that way. Since Kerris buys hers from a local bakery, my ordering them online was rather "blind," as I did not know which bakeries to trust having a good quality, "genuine" product. So, I looked at several websites online, some for direct sales from bakeries, and some from "middlemen" such as eBay and Amazon. I was also trying to balance "purchase price" and "shipping costs" and with the desire to have a "quality & genuine" item. It's hard to do sometimes, especially when one has never tried something before! 😂

Perusing all the sites I visited, as well as Wikipedia, I learned that Mooncakes come in many flavors. However, the two most common traditional flavors are made from sweetened Red Bean paste or Lotus Seed paste. Both sounded intriguing! It would have been nice to have found a site that offered one cake of each of those two flavors so I could try both, but I wasn't so lucky. Available selections in my price range included: (1) Lotus Seed, or (2) a random selection of cakes in flavors such as pineapple, strawberry, honey peach, cantaloupe, chestnut, red bean, black sesame, and others. So, there was no guarantee I'd get a Red Bean in the random selection, although the other flavors sounded delightful!

I finally settled on an offering of Lotus Seed cakes from a bakery called Joy Luck Palace. Their price wasn't too bad and the cakes came packaged in a reusable metal tin. The Lotus Seed flavor seems to be the more traditional choice, even more common than Red Bean, and I figured even if I didn't like the cakes, at least I'd have the reusable tin. 😜 Seriously, though, there's not many foods I don't like, so the odds of my not liking the Lotus Seed was rather slim.

After placing the order, it took exactly one week for the cakes to arrive; not bad, since I didn't pay for expedited shipping. The decorative tin arrived undamaged, nestled inside a cardboard box with a little packing material. The tin weighed a bit more than I expected, as the cakes are rather dense. The tin had a tamper-proof seal around the side so I wrestled with that a couple minutes, trying to figure the best way to remove it without scratching the tin. Each of the four cakes was in its own tray inside a quite heavy plastic baggie, so the cakes were protected even if the shipping box were jostled a bit during transit.

I mixed the seasons by putting the autumnal Mooncake on one of my Spring Daisy™ pattern "bread & butter plates" by Oneida^® 😁 (a gift from my mother) along with a small salad fork from my Wallace Stainless^® flatware set with the Starglow™ pattern. I inherited the flatware set from my parents; it was what we used when I was a child, and I love the durability and simplicity of this set! (I mention the flatware here as a reminder, as I keep forgetting the name of the pattern. LOL)

^{Mooncake on plate with one wedge removed}

As can be seen from the photo above and it's zoomed-in view below, the interior of the cake is quite creamy looking, since it is made from a paste of lotus seeds. The outside "crust" of the cake is delicate and not too thick. Also, most people in my part of the world would not consider these as a "cake" since they aren't light and fluffy on the inside. The filling is quite dense and closer to the weight and texture of a piece of "fudge" rather than that of a "cake."

Now for the vexing question — how to describe the flavor?

There's an old joke that is sometimes said when one is trying to describe foods for which common food-related adjectives fall short: "tastes like chicken," but I won't use that joke here. Or wait, maybe I just did... LOL

I don't find Lotus Seed to be an easy flavor to describe... to my taste buds, it isn't fruity, floral, sweet, savory, nutty, or any of the other common words that come to mind when I think of food. Well, perhaps a little nutty, but not overly so... The closest thing I can think of is to imagine an Egg Custard Pie (the flavor, not the texture), but much more dense, and with a definite "earthy" edge to it. That's still not quite accurate, but it's the closest thing I can think of at the moment. 😆 It's one of those foods that one simply must taste to fully understand the flavor.

^{closeup of Mooncake and wedge, for detail}

Now, for an interesting twist... When I read about the Lotus Seed Mooncakes online, most websites described them as: "Double Egg Yolk & Lotus Seed Paste" cakes. So, I figured they'd broken two egg yolks into the paste and stirred it to make a richer, creamier filling before baking them. Wrong! Cutting into the cake, there is actually a small-but-whole, unbroken, duck egg yolk in there. encased in the Lotus Seed paste. 😯 (see pic below)

The practice of salting duck eggs is a way of curing them, and seems to be common in China. It's salted duck eggs that are added to mooncakes to represent the Full Moon. Cakes without eggs are available (which is good for vegans), but cakes with two eggs are most common, and varieties with three or four eggs can also be found. In the past, I've eaten duck eggs a few times when a former friend shared some from her farm, and they were fine when cooked as one would cook a chicken egg. However, I did not find the flavor of the salted duck eggs to be particularly enjoyable. I wouldn't say I 'hated' the taste, but they certainly would not be one of my favorite foods. I ate one of the two egg yolks in my first Mooncake, but tossed the other yolk out back for some passing critter to enjoy.

But, the Lotus Seed paste. itself, was yummy! 😋

^{Mooncake with egg yolk inside}

If I buy any more Mooncakes in the future, I think I will opt for that random "variety" selection of flavors. I'd still like to sample the sweetened Red Bean paste, as well as the honey peach, and the chestnut.

• Have you ever tried a traditional Mooncake?
• If so, which flavor(s) are your favorite(s)?
• Do you celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival?
• Anything you'd like to add, @livinguktaiwan • @stoodkev • @cedricguillas?