DIY Mooncakes - what is in a mooncake?

You can try and buy mooncakes in China, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam - and the USA! Mooncakes are delicious and so exotic with their classic pictures or messages in Chinese writing on top.  They are round but often with scalloped sides, and my favourite filling is the classic red bean paste. Another very popular filling is lotus seed.






Mooncakes are delicious but expensive. You could make your own.

Problem
What is in a mooncake?

Could I make one easily? Why not?

Answers
The traditional mooncake has a filling of syrup such as Gold Syrup and lard or butter or coconut oil. If you or any of your family or guests want to try your mooncakse, you need to check the ingredients, or make your own to be sure what is in.

No meat or meat products
You have to drop the lard, which is pig fat, if your guests are likely to include Moslems or Jews or vegetarians. Vegetarians won't eat meat so that rules out the lard.

No Milk or Butter
But some vegetarians not only avoid eating meat from dead animals. They don't want milk or eggs taken from live animals. A proprotion of vegetarians are vegan. You have to exchange butter for something else if your guests are vegan (won't eat milk products).

No Eggs
The vegans won't eat eggs. That rules out the salted egg concealed inside the mooncake.
If you buy a box of mooncakes, sometimes about 2 in six or ten or twelve  mooncakes will have the more expensive filling with the salted eggs. Ask the shop to point out which mooncakes have the eggs inside them.

In addition, some people are allergic to eggs. That was why Bird Eye Custard was invented, to make a quick custard recipe without eggs.

If you are serving a group in a public place, a club, or even your own extended family, you need to label ingedients.

Regarding allergies, the allergies you have to label for are nuts, eggs, and milk, because a proportion of Asians have lactose intolerance.

A recipe using sesame seed and explanations and pictures are on this website.

https://omnivorescookbook.com/traditional-mooncake

https://www.finedininglovers.com/recipes/dessert/chinese-food-mooncake-recipe/

https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Mooncakes

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

https://www.facebook.com/mooncakesonline/

Author
Angela Lasnbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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.