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

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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.