Where to Try and Buy Mooncakes for the Chinese Autumn Festival

 

Mooncakes with poppy seeds or other seeds on top

Mooncake, one word, used in most dictionaries, or moon cake, two words? Mooncakes, my favourite Chinese food.  Buy them from Chinese supermarkets and online. I used to like the sweet fillings, especially red bean curd, and anything with nuts. 

I would taste them in Singapore at the Sheraton Towers hotel lobby on my way into a Toastmasters International meeting upstairs. 

At many of the smaller clubs in community centres, a generous donor would have bought, or brought one leftover from a box of four at their home or office, or even made a mooncake. Or the committee would have allocated from club funds an amount for a mooncake. 

Cutting and sharing a moon cake

You can cut a mooncake into 8, or even 16. Some people would decline the sugary confections. Others would hang back to be sure that visitors, especially those from overseas, were sure to be able to try moon cake.  Because of Covid, free tastings are discontinued in many places to stop people touching. I don't see why you can't cut up a mooncake or any other item with gloved hands, in disposable gloves, serve them one piece at a time on a disposable cocktail stick, and throw away a disposable plate or put a used plate into a dishwasher. You might consider how to keep people's fingers away from mooncake before distributing the teeny pieces.

For a long time I could not understand why the moon cakes with one or two salted eggs inside were popular and more expensive. Then I discovered that too much sweetness and sugar gives you a sugar spike. You feel bad and overload your system. The salted egg counteracts the sugar and adds protein.

Mooncakes with crunchy nuts.

Mooncakes with single and double salted egg filling. The top is pastry embossed with a pattern which in the olden days was usually a seasonal or good luck message. But nowadays it could be the name of the bakery or supply company or shop.

Snow cover, white cover.

Jelly type covering. 

Mooncake decorated on top with four Chinese symbols surrounded by flowers and curved patterns. Behind the mooncake is a colourful box in which the mooncake is presented to the customer or recipient or meeting.

This is the most popular classic design. You can buy a wooden mould in which to place the pastry outside and imprint the pattern on the top.

Many Chinese restaurants and shops sell mooncakes at this time of year. Also look in the lobbies of hotels where carts are set up selling moon cakes and often offering a tiny taste to tempt you to buy one, or more usually, a presentation box of four. 

Boxes

The most elaborate boxes have drawers and coverings or brocade or even inlaid wooden boxes with glittery or pearly insets. 

Symbols

The circular shape symbolises unity. The festival is a time for families to have reunions.

Buying Tips

You can even buy mooncakes in ice cream parlours in Singapore. In Singapore mooncakes are beautifully and expensively presented as business gifts.  Less expensive mooncakes can be bought in Taiwan. If you look for mooncakes online and specify lowest price to highest the first suggestions are not mooncakes but packaging for mooncakes and bakeware. At first I found this annoying. Then I thought, that's really handy. 

Safety and Salted Eggs

The salted egg moon cakes are often favoured as being tastier, less sickly. However, at one time they were banned in some areas of the USA because some of the eggs might have contained raw egg and the authorities wanted to be sure of not importing avian (bird) flu.

Price & Cost of Mooncakes

Although mooncakes look expensive, each mooncake serves several people. You cut a circular mooncake like a full size cake into small triangular slices. In theory the ones which look like round edge cubes cut be cut horizontally and vertically like a chessboard.

Where to Buy

Hotels, coffee shops and supermarkets in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, areas of Asia with Chinese communities such as Malaysia. In Malaysia you can buy halal mooncakes. In England in Chinatowns such as in London and Manchester. In the USA in Chinatowns such as in San Francisco. In Canada. Online.

Useful Websites

General Information

https://eu.cincinnati.com/story/news/local/hamiltoncounty/2020/10/09/feds-seize-mooncakes-cincinnati-thwart-risks-imported-disease/5944812002/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake

To make your own buy a press, or wooden moulds, or silicon moulds. Serve them in see-through domes.>

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healifty-Mooncake-Flowers-Pressure-Accessories/

To buy mooncakes ready made

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mooncake-Freshly-China-Town-Bakery

Expensive. 29 pounds for four.