Friday, September 18, 2015

Mooncake in Chinatowns, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, USA

Traditionally the Chinese sun festival was in spring and the moon festival is autumn. Mooncakes are my current favourite foods, served at most Toastmasters Clubs meetings and contests in September 2015 in Singapore.

I tasted mooncakes with fillings of red beancurd, durian and lotus. You can buy them in tins. They are like miniature cakes the size of the palm of your hand and you often buy a tin of four, each one a different flavour. You might have one red, one yellow and one green.

Each cake in a tin is often sold preserved in sealed plastic with a sliver of preservative (like the teeny packets you get inside some shoe boxes).

I thought at first it might be a sauce, like the packets of soy sauce you get with take away meals of rice from Chinese restaurants in the UK,  so I was disappointed to find it was not edible. However, I was quickly mollified by a taste of mooncake.

Moon cakes are often made with a lard pastry. Plus a highly sugared dense filling.

This is what they look like. The message on the top is Chinese characters.

You cut the cake into four. Then again into eight. Your hosts are not being mean. Those small pieces are very filling. Like chocolates, one, or two pieces (of mooncake), is quite enough.



Modern variations include an ice cream moon cake made in the USA.

http://chinesefood.about.com/od/mooncake/a/moonfestival.htm

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, speaker.

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