Mooncakes - filling and fun, pastry, sugar, and hard boiled eggs - from Amazon to Zheng Feng

 I love mooncakes. In Singapore I put on a lot of weight. I went toToastmasters clubs. Once or twice a year they had mooncakes. Pop up shops and kiosks in hotels and shopping malls sold mooncakes at all prices. Signapore is a business city and prices go from high int he city centre, to exhobitant in gold leaf boxes, to sets of unusual flavours and colours, with embossed indented and raised patterns on the circular pastry top, to painted design on little decorated wooden caabinets with window double doors and/or triple drawers. I have been to Toassmasters International speeches on making mooncakes, on mookcake designs and flavours worldwide, and on mooncake packages and cabinets.

I used to wonder why the more expensive mooncakes had boiled eggs in the middle. Why were the ones with egg added more expensive. I thought that the ones without egg were preferable. Anybody can boil an egg. No everybody had the elusive, exoitc expsnive armomas and flavours and ingredients ofr mooncakes. 

One day I bought one with egg by mistake. I discovered something surprising and satisfying. After an entire mooncakes (which is supposed to be shared, cut into teeny cake slices, tringular, just a dice of sugar anf fat laden calories, a whole mooncake is too much sugar. Bad for your wieght. And teeth. And diabeters. And the feeling if stickiness and siness grows. 

But if you eat the one with egg in the middle, you have added a dieteary essential, protein, and diluted the sugar conetent. to you can eat more mouthfuls. Or just the same amout feeling stasfied rather than overwhelmed by sugar and sick. So a mooncake with an egg inside is not just a snack, for between meals. It has the inredients for a lunch or dinner. (Add fruit or vegetables, or both such as a bed of lettice and grapes. Or a bowl of cherry tomatoes and tiny oranges at a buffet.)

I realised another reason for extra cost. Depanding on the ize of the cake and egg. How sould you fit an eniter egg inside a mooncake? A quali's egg is smaller but dearer. Because some of the smaller birds give out eggs less often than chickens. Mooncakes on earth re in the shape of the moon, and reflect the movement of the moon in the skies. Also called the autumn 

London Festival

Moncakes abound in Singapore. Also Chine. Taiwan. Hong Kong. Chinetowns worldwide.

Online. Amazon for next day delivery with prime, which many businesses have and can send gifts to customers of shops or clients of services. 

The A to Z of mooncakes'

Suppliers range from Amazon to Zeng Feng on Ebay. Also on Etsy and Temu.

Ueful Websites

I have previous posts from previous years about mooncakes, which I praised when I was living in Singapore. This year I am in London on the vital mooncake dates and the air fares are expensive so I hop about less, and with the age of 80 on the horizon I have more excuse to feel less like travelling daily. So I am sitting at my desk, hoping to receive a mooncake.

I looked online. Amazon offered me a set of mooncakes. The flavour included chocolate and matcha. I suppose chocolate is for the British market. Matcha for the Japanese. But these are not the traditional oriental flavours. Perhaps an easy introduction.

Useful Websites

https://www.hot-dinners.com/Features/Hot-Dinners-recommends/mooncakes-autumn-festival-london-where-to-get

https://www.amazon.co.uk/specialty-mooncakes-chocolate-delicious-breakfast/

Mooncakes to Buy Worldwide, to Choose At Hotels and Supermarkets, Or Clubs, Or Make

Every year Chinese and Asian communiities hold a mid-auttumn festival which is celebrated with moon cakes. In the UK we have apples falling from trees in gardens. In Chinatowns and Asia and online there are mooncakes.

Moon Cakes

Traditonal moon cakes have a baked pastry case.  Inside are dense sugary fudge-like filled The sweetmeats are muffin size. If you have a group, you cut the mooncake into tiny triangular sections like a large cake. A tiny piece, like a dice of fudge, goes a long way. Most are pure sweetness. 

You can buy a variety of flavours. 

Flavours

Red bean. Lotus. Grreen Tea. Ice cream. Durian.

Eggs

More expensive are those with teeny boiled eggs inside. How do they get the eggs so small? Are they baby eggs or shrunk? They are duck eggs. The eggs complement the sweet taste, and provide protein. 

Souvenirs

Hotels sell expensive versions with decorative boxes you can give as gifts to business associates and as a thank you to hosts or guests. Pop-up shops sometimes sell individual ones as well as large boxes of four or more.

You can buy mooncakes online from the websites of supermarkets in Singapore. But watch out for scams on WhatsApp.

DIY

You can find recipes and buy plastic or wooden moulds.

Amazon sells a set of two modern mooncake moulds which push out the mooncake.

Mooncake moulds from Amazon.

Supermarkets

In September 2023 Fairprice supermarket in Singapore was offering online mooncakes, a single moon cake at 15 Singapore dollars, Flavours include lotus paste, green tea. A large number of individual mooncakes and boxes are shown on the website.

Fairprice supermarket also stocks halal mooncakes.

See my previous posts on mooncakes.

Useful Websites

Useful Websites

https://www.fairprice.com.sg/product/prestigio-delights-lotus-paste-double-yolk-mooncake-180-g-90141002?gclid=Cj0KCQjw6_CYBhDjARIsABnuSzqoTmivI4NL7jBe8llIkCAsZKfM6iacogPsvPBRNPxuJEwVoRyr2EgaAs6TEALw_wcB

https://www.facebook.com/toastboxsingapore/posts/these-traditional-teochew-style-mooncakes-from-thye-moh-chan-are-made-with-delic/3213940525320115/

Great recipes:

https://zhangcatherine.com/mooncakes/

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2021/09/food-and-fun-at-autumn-harvest.html

Please share links to your favourite posts 

Mooncake update - making mooncakes, and travelling with mooncakes

 

I chose topics for impromptu speeches connected with festivals, mid-Autumn festivals, Chinese festivals, lanterns and mooncakes for a Zoom online meeting of the Braddell Height Advanced Toastmasters club, based in Singapore.

 I asked: What was your greatest success or failure with with festival foods, such as mooncakes. The winning table topic was about mooncakes.

In Praise of Mooncakes

To sum it up, winner, Jim started by praising the Chinese for inventing compact and highly calorific mooncakes. "Not like any other cake." 

Extracting Cooked Mooncakes From Moulds

The body of his speech was devoted to describing his failure to extract his home-made, cooked mooncake from the straight-sided cupcake shape bowl in a wooden mould. 

"Neither knives nor spikes would remove the cupcake, just created crumbs." 

"Finally, I tried the traditional system of banging  the mould on a table. My cupcake fell on the floor!"

Mooncake For Travelling?

He ended by suggesting that such a condensed cake would be ideal for a quick pick-me-up for travellers. Small. Simple shape.  

Hm. A bit heavy to carry.

 The UK standby for hiking and hill-walking is Kendal mint cake, which comes as a flat plain white bar. But many people prefer the chocolate covered version. The white sugar centre is not thin like After Eights, more like the round, hard, solid, circular mint chocolates.

My husband took a bar up Kilimanjaro. If you are in the East, or near a Chinatown at the right time of year, look for mooncakes. 

If you are in the west, in the UK, look for Kendal Mint cake. See next post

Useful Websites

Mooncakes

Dozens of suppliers during the season. Set your price and filling in the search engine. Look for local Chinese or other oriental restaurants such as Korean and Japanese.

https://tuktukmart.co.uk/products/double-happiness-white-lotus-paste-double-yolks-mooncake-

https://www.foodforfoodies.co.uk/products/zheng-feng-mooncake-red-bean-paste-

2 mooncakes, London, UK:

https://www.yepss.co.uk/products/fa-famx210102

Mooncake moulds

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cookie-Stamps-Autumn-Festival-Cutter

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cookie-Stamps-Thickness-Adjustable-Decoration

Set to amazon.com if not in the UK. In theory your computer shows Amazon the address you have set and adapts.

https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Paper-Lantern

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is Vice President Public Relations of  Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Club.

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.

Salted egg yolk at McDonalds

This ad appeared next to me as I waited at a bus stop in Singapore. A series of McDonalds pictures appeared. Each country has its own seasonal specialities adapted to local tastes. try them whilst you can, because you can't be sure they will be available next year, next month, next week or even tomorrow. I loved the durian shakes, but they kept running out and a month later they were not available.

Salted egg is popular in Singapore. It appears as the centre of the more expensive mooncakes, for the autumn harvest festival at full moon time. Mooncakes are generally sweet. the salted egg enables you to eat more of the sweet stuff and get some protein, and a contrast in tastes.

If you are a Singaporean going to England, like the USA and the rest of the world, the UK has many branches of McDonalds. Also look for the British lunchtime snack, Scotch Egg, a boiled egg encased in sausaged meat.

Travel Tips

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

australia.com

visitbritain.com

visitbritain.shop.com

visitbritain.org

visittheusa.co.uk

visitsingapore.com

Singapore Airlines: 

singaporeair.com

Author

Travel writer and photographer, Angela Lansbury.  

Teacher and tutor of English and other languages. Please bookmark and share your favourite posts and websites.

Moon cake festival dinner in Singapore - what are you missing?

Singapore flag.

Problem
I am either away the night of the moon cake festival dinner or away at the time they are selling advance tickets. So every year I miss it and vow, next year I will attend.

Awnings around the swimming pool. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

 I see the awnings going up around the swimming pool for days in advance. The tickets are not sold by the swimming pool attendant but in the office. Residents are allowed to invite guests, eg visiting grandparents from overseas, former residents who have moved away, friends who live in the same street or nearby.

The tickets this year were modestly priced, about $5, but it was a pot luck supper. I love pot luck. (Apparently pot luck started in the USA with native americans who threw all their vegetables into a big pot for everybody to share. What you pulled out to fill your bowl was pot luck. At least that's one story. I'm sure there are several others.

I spoke to some friends from the complex (which has about six skyscrapers around the pool, 598 flats, with at least two people on average that is 1000 potential people). I reckon it means at least 1001, because the guests of honour is a government minister. I could go to the office and ask, or phone or email. Never mind. You get the picture. This will be happening all over Singapore.

Toastmasters Meeting Comments
At Toastmasters International evenings for several weeks we were starting the evening going around everybody answering the question,' what will you do for Chinese moon cake festival?'' or, 'what does it mean to you? Many people answered, 'It's for family and friends to gather together'.

Big Events
So, if it's a festival for families to gather together, why go to the big events? Firstly, to save organizing at home.

Secondly, the more the merrier. Convivial.

Thirdly, as an additional event. Your overseas visitors or returning family can have one family meal, another out meeting neighbours, distant friends, making new friends.

Children's Festivals
My Chinese Singaporeans also said, 'The Autumn Harvest Festival party is for children'. Like Halloween and Christmas: games, guessing games, contests and gifts.

Sound in Singapore
Finally, the sound of these large events echoes around the voids between the skyscrapers. All around the complex, the public arena, the HDB (Housing Development Board - Singapore equivalent of the UK's council housing), and the private estates. You listen to the cheers and laughter and wonder what you are missing.

You can't hear exactly what they are saying. But you can hear them all evening. Any other activity, such as reading or watching TV or talking, is punctuated by the sounds.

Notting Hill Carnival Sounds
It's a bit like the Notting Hill Carnival in London, as I learned from somebody who lived alongside. For many years she joined in. Then when she got older she went away for the weekend. She told me that if you live alongside, no point staying home trying to read or sleep with all that racket outside or bands, applause, cheering, announcements. Either go and join in or go away for the weekend.

Singapore's Mooncake Festival Prices
In Singapore at this year's Mooncake festival, or Autumn Festival, I was told,
your ticket either includes the price of a piece of mooncake or just the table and chairs (according to whether you bought a ticket in advance or just bought on the night. Presumably they need to know numbers in advance for catering, but you can turn up with an extra guest on the night so long as they only occupy a chair and don't need the free food included in the other price. The advance ticket will include a voucher for a slice of mooncake or other food.

Some places it's the other way round. At many Toastmasters events, paying in advance means a reduction.

Stalls around offer snacks you can buy.

Regrets and Plans
This year my family heard the sound of the festival and instead of regretting not going, my family, members, who are into classical music and singing in tune and vocal variety at Toastmasters, grumbled, "Dreadful noise. Nonstop cheerleading and shouting into the microphone. You couldn't talk to anybody. Glad we didn't go."

All the same, next year, I must go to the mooncake festival! I love mooncakes!

Mooncake for the Chinese autumn harvest festival in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

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

Mooncakes - Happiness Is Eating Mooncakes At The Chinese Harvest Festival

Mooncake in piecrust for Chinese harvest festival in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem
I remember harvest festival from my schooldays in London, England. fruits and vegetables and cereals laid out on the floor of the gym in front of the stage at school. Requests for donations. Living in the city, it all seemed rather remote.

Answers
Singapore's harvest festival, a subdivision of the harvest festivals in China and the rest of Asia, especially Taiwan, Hong Kong and places with Chinese populations, is much more fun, with the ubiquitous (found everywhere) mooncakes, moon-shape cakes, with a piecrust stamped with plant designs, Chinese symbols, or snow versions in white.

Inside are highly calorific and filling centres, very sweet, with the occasional salted egg yolk. The ingredients are exotic, lotus, sometimes nuts, maybe purple or chestnut colour.

A teeny section, like a slice of pie, goes a long way, very filling.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Mid-Autumn Festival Starts Sept 24 2018 but mooncakes are already on sale

Moon cake for the mid-autumn festival, with a delicious filling, usually sweet. The moon cake is round, like the shape of the full moon, and the small white boiled egg inside represents the moon.

Problem
When is it a good time to be in Singapore and other countries with large Chinese populations? I was vaguely wondering when the mid-Autumn festival would start. Like Christmas, it's a diet-breaking time of year. I love moon cakes.

Answer
Shangi-la Hotel in Singapore sent me news that they are selling moon cakes in advance of September 24th. Yes, that's the date of the Mid-Autumn festival this year, celebrated in China, Singapore and anywhere with a Chinese community.

Look out for moon cakes in restaurants, supermarkets, ice cream parlours, airport shops, and online from the big sellers such as eBay, Amazon and the Chinese internet sites.

Toastmasters Clubs Festival Talks
In Singapore, I am offered a teeny slice of mooncake in the refreshment break at Toastmasters International clubs. I've had mooncakes at two or three of the English-language clubs. I expect the Mandarin-speaking clubs are equally keen.

If you go to a club, expect to hear a speech about the mid-Autumn Festival. Do some reserach in case you are asked to speak about it, or say how it is celebrated in your country, or the country you have just travelled from.

Buying Cakes
The moon cakes are at varied prices. Some of the shops sell you four in a presentation box for about £24. Mooncakes are often given as gifts to valued business customers, which is why those expensive stiff boxes with drawers and red tassels are found in shops all round the financial district.

I even went to a pop-up shop which was devoted entirely to moon cakes for the moon cake festival season.

Others will sell one mooncake for about 36.

One visitor from Taiwan said that in Taiwan you can buy mooncakes cheaper. Out of curiosity, I shall check nearer the date.

Cutting
Moon cakes are muffin sized, cut in up to 4, 8 or16 bite-size pieces, like a full-size cake. It looks small, but it's very dense and full of sugar and, I suppose fats, so you soon feel you've had enough. Most people have one, or sometimes two slices. Although, I would not say no, if somebody insisted.

That reminds me. I must look out for mooncakes at airports. I must also ask friends and family overseas to bring me some back. If you are en route from America or Australia via Asia, or have a colleague who is, ask them to look out for mooncakes.

You could make your own, which is apparently time-consuming. You also need to invest in a mould to stamp the pattern on top. Many Chinese households will have one. I bought one from a lady who was leaving Singapore for the USA. She had had it lost at the back of her cupboard for many years, until she started to pack up to move house.

Now the mould is lost somewhere at the back of a cupboard in our place in Singapore. Frankly, I think I shall buy a mooncake ready-made. Maybe from Taiwan, a neighbourhood supermarket, or a market.

Moon cakes are an acquired taste. I managed to acquire the taste quite quickly and now I'm an addict.

Flavours
The cakes come in lots of flavours. My favourites are anything nutty. Or like bean curd paste.

Egg Centre
You pay more for a salted preserved egg in the centre. You pay even more for a double egg centre.

Double yolk and lotus seed.

At first I felt aggrieved that my sweet centre had been taken over, like a cuckoo's eggs, by a salted egg.

Later, I could see the point. The sugary centre is overwhelming. A salted boiled egg adds some nutrition and enables you to eat more without it seeming too sickly.

Savoury Centres
For those you aren't keen on sweets, you can find savoury centres.

Unusual Cakes
Ice Cream
You can also get ice cream mooncakes. Again pricey. I went to one shop which had had a sign in the window.

When I went back later, they said the ice cream mooncakes are made to order. Because the products are going to melt in the heat, they are not on display (except as plaster models), and you have to order them to be made and delivered or collected at a precise time.

I like nuts, and lotus seeds.

But not savouries. I feel I've been cheated.

Suzhou style meat mooncake.



If you see a free taste at any shop, make sure you take a couple of crumbs of different flavours.

Shangri La Hotel
The Shangri-La hotel is where Trump stayed (in the exclusive wing, away from the crowds at the breakfast buffet which I described earlier).

We bought items from the small but well-stocked shop. If you are passing, enquire about the mooncakes.

The website told me that the items were up to 30% or more off the usual price for bulk orders. percent price off what? I had to sign in, but wait until the date when items were on order. The website  suggested I might like to buy a few hundred mooncakes. Presumably for somebody with Trump's budget. I wish.

I'll try Facebook next, or Amazon.

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore.
For reservation and enquiries, please email dining.sls@shangri-la.com or call +65 6213 4473.

Expect celebrations and food in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Vietnam, and Chinese restaurants worldwide.

Useful Websites
https://www.facebook.com/mooncakesonline/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. See my previous posts on mooncakes. See next post for DIY mooncakes.

The Moon and the Mid-Autumn Festival

Mooncakes which you can buy all over the world on the Internet are made to celebrate the full moon at the mid-autumn festival. The date varies because it uses the lunar calendar.

It all sounds very abstract until you walk home at night in Singapore and see the moon shining overhead, as it has done for centuries.

At a Toastmasters International speakers club a member said that he felt it linked him to his relatives all over the world. As a child he thought everybody looked up at the same moon.

Somebody said that it depends which part of the world you are in. Now we have the internet we can all look at the same moon and celebrate snowy Christmas on a Christmas card online even if we are in Australia where the seasons are reversed. We can link to people in other parts of the world and traditions linking us to memories of our childhood and our grandparents and ancestors long ago.

The mooncakes which were once only eaten by the Chinese with friends and family are now available to every tourist and friend and business to share with colleagues and friends.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Mooncakes to try and buy in London, America and worldwide

Mooncakes in Singapore and Asia
I ate mooncakes in Singapore. (Cheaper in Taiwan, I was told.) The last time I tried them was at a meeting of the Bukit Batok Toastmasters Club at the Bukit Batok Community Club near Bukit Batok MRT station. The Sergeant at Arms asked everybody in the room to tell their best memories of eating moon cakes and celebrating the mid-autumn festival. The festival is celebrated in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Vietnam. Also look for mooncakes in Macau.

Lanterns
I had thought that the lanterns lit by candles were a danger and I was right. One member told us how he and his childhood friends had carefully carried lanterns but a gust of wind blew and as usual the lanterns caught fire. On this occasion the lanterns accidentally set fire to trees, "Fortunately in ht neighbour's garden - not ours!"

Nostalgically, the speakers regretted that nowadays lanterns are often lit by electronic lights. (From a health and safety point of view the modern method sounds much safer.)

Another speaker recalled how in the Sixties in Vietnam you often had power outages. The whole city neighbourhood was in darkness. Not only no lights in your own house and garden. No nearby skyscrapers, nor streets lights - unlike modern Singapore. So you had a spooky or romantic or olde worlde atmosphere. You could clearly see the large moon which the festival celebrates.

Get Together
The festival also causes the coming together of families. Like Christian and worldwide Christmas Day and the Jewish Passover or Seder Night, the festival means shared food, singing of traditional songs and reunion of families.

The Toastmasters Club had a mid-meeting interval where we had a chance to try both a sliver of the traditional baked mooncake and the colourful snow skin mooncake. We took a vote on which was preferred and the vote was almost equally divided.

England and America
I was thinking about where I could get mooncakes in London and the American continent and thought of all the Chinese restaurants worldwide and the Chinese restaurants in Chinese areas of London and Manchester in England, New York and West Coast America, and Vancouver in Canada.

Today I looked online for mooncakes in London and the USA. TripAdvisor told me that a visitor to London found the London prices four times the price in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

Mooncakes Worldwide
Where can you buy mooncakes worldwide?
In Alphabetical order: China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, England.

Mooncakes in the USA
See and buy online in season in the USA from Kee Wah bakery in Los Angeles, California, USA:
https://www.keewah.us
Worldwide orders from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Kee-Wah-Bakery-White-Mooncake/dp/B005F7LXHM
http://www.chinatownology.com/mid_autumn_festival.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake
For more information and pictures of mooncakes, see my previous posts on mooncakes.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Last Chance To Buy Mooncakes? Dash to Singaporean Centres

Mooncakes were displayed at a pop up counter in the grand lobby atrium of the Sheraton Towers Hotel in Singapore where I attended at meeting of the Toastmasters Club of Singapore. The speakers group was meeting, as usual on the first three Mondays of the month, above the hotel lobby, but I could not resist stopping to try a sample of mooncakes and pick up a leaflet.

The mooncakes were made by the chefs of the Cantonese Li Bai restaurant, which is in the basement level of the Sheraton Hotel. What does Li Bai mean? Li Bai was a famous Tang dynasty poet who lived in the 700s, to be exact 701-762, so he died having reached the grand age of 60. Did he eat well? Did he eat mooncakes? When were they invented? I don't know if he ate well but it seems he drank well, inspired to write more than 1000 poems which are still in the syllabus for Chinese schoolchildren today.

Li Bai, or Li Bo, the poet, was fond of wine, and the Li Bai restaurant leaflet shows vodka beside a mooncake. Li Bai, legend says, drowned after falling out of a boat trying to grab the reflection on the moon in the water.

The cover of the leaflet shows how the snow skin coloured mooncakes can be prettily presented. You can serve one (pink) mooncake in the saucer centre of a white lattice mini plate. Two contrasting colour mooncakes (they show yellow and green) can be served on a larger white plate.

A single white mooncake, or two or more can be presented on a silver edged larger plate, eaten with a modern slender silver pastry fork with a handle shaped like a slim pencil.

Mooncakes in Singapore are elaborate and you can buy them in pretty cardboard or metal boxes or wooden boxes which can be saved for keeping trinkets or costume jewellery, stationery, precious photos or paper, displayed in a glass cabinet, or whatever you like. The most expensive of this restaurants' boxes, a wooden box containing four pieces costs $168 (Singapore dollars - about £84!) are elegant gifts for esteemed clients.

According to the leaflet, mooncakes are available from 15 August until 15 September 2016 (the festival dates following the lunar calendar used by the Chinese as well as traditional Jewish and Muslim calendars).

The moon cakes have been sold at:
Li Bai Cantonese Restaurant
15 August - 15 September 2016
11.30 am to 10.30 pm

Sheraton Towers Singapore Hotel Lobby
15 August-15 September 2016
11 am - 9.30 pm
(Nearest MRT railway station Newton)
Pictures of the hotel in my previous posts

Takashima (city centre department store in Ngee Ann City on Orchard Road)
13 August - 15 September
10 am to 10 pm

Tampines Mall (Green East-West line, four stops from Changi airport, change at Tanah Merah)
31 August to 14 September

Jurong Point (in the west of the island)
29 August - 14 September 2016
9.30 am to- 10.30 pm

Change Alley
15 August to 15 September 2016
10 am - 7 pm (weekdays only)

Pick up a leaflet. After the event, you can read about the mooncake selection and plan your tastings and purchases for next year.

www.sheratonsingapore.com
More about mooncakes in my previous posts.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

The Moon Eclipse and Blood Moon Sept 27/8 2015 and Mooncakes For Travellers and Armchair Travellers

The BBC and other UK news sites have featured the red moon.

In Singapore and Hong Kong shops, restaurants, department stores and even ice cream parlours have been selling moon cakes for the autumn moon festival (dates varying year to year - using the lunar calendar).

I tried mooncakes at Toastmasters meetings. My favourite flavours include red bean, which is like dates. Shops were offering to sell boxes of four mooncakes and you could select four different colours, red, green, white, yellow.

You often get an elaborate box which puts up the cost. You can buy mooncakes on line at about £16 for a set of four. Actually it's no more expensive that cheesecake from a coffee shop, or a large cake from a supermarket. Mooncake is very filling. You cut them into four or eight, representing a quarter moon.

You could buy just one mooncake for under £5 but the postage is almost as much for one so buying four cuts the postage cost per cake. In a group it's fun to have a mixture of colours and allows you to compare. I was looking at the websites trying to be sure I would get a mixture of flavours, not four of one flavour.  The pictures showed a box of four different colours, but when you want to order the boxes were of one flavour.  So if you are travelling to a Chinese area, look for mooncakes and stock up. In Singapore ai was told they only sell mooncakes at festival time (like Xmas cake and chocolate easter eggs, get them when you can). I was wondering whether prices would come down at the end of the festival to sell off leftover stocks, but many shops make to order, so they won't have leftovers.

I looked at the postage on Ebay, and Amazon. Another way to cut postal costs is if you are already a member of Amazon Prime or combine with another order from your 'basket' or wishlist to qualify for free postage.

I took a look around this comparison site.
http://salecombo.co.uk/Chinese%20Mooncake?p=scb&gclid=CLXvo-3Ol8gCFevpwgodmDECngIt led me to moulds for stamping a design on top of DIY mooncakes for cooks.

For pictures of the moon around the world
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/must_see/34377524
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3251497/Blood-moon-paint-sky-red-Stargazers-world-look-heavens-witness-lunar-spectacle-time-33-years.html

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, speaker.