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Mooncake at the Moonfestival


Traditional mooncake, waiting for a buyerAh! Mooncake, when I see this kind of pastry arriving in the stores, I know the Mid-Autumn Festival or Moonfestival is approaching.

Few festivals are more important for the Chinese people than the Moonfestival as it is commonly known here in Malaysia.

Most likely you will see and try some of the mooncakes, a typical kind of Chinese pastry in this period of the year if you go around with Chinese people.

What are mooncakes?

The traditional mooncake is a type of pastry, either round or rectangular, about 4 to 5 cm think and typically made of lotus past surrounded by a thin crust.

It may contain yolks from duck eggs. Compare to western pastries the typical mooncake is quite heavy. If you are with Chinese people, most likely you would eat mooncake with Chinese tea.

Mooncake inside

What is inside the mooncake...really nice and very filling

The above description is the typical traditional mooncake. Last week, 2 weeks before the Moonfestival I was in Penang, and I saw that the modern world has arrived in creating complete new types of mooncakes. It seems there nowadays are as many tastes as there are people, well, almost! As I like the traditional mooncakes, I was curious what the modern mooncakes would taste.

Jelly Mooncake
Pink/purple jelly mooncake: dragon fruit with blueberry filling

I tried the Lotus with coffee, dragon fruit with blueberry, coconut and chocolate mooncakes but honestly, there's nothing that beats the traditional mooncake. Many of the modern mooncakes are made of jelly. See the picture.

The filling depends a little on the regions culture. Typical the filling contains either Lotus seed past, sweet bean paste, Jujube paste or a mix of 5 types of nuts which are chopped and held together with a syrup. Nuts used can be walnut, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, peanuts, sesame or almond.

Personally I found these jelly cakes horrible
Personally I found these jelly cakes horrible

Moon Festival or Lantern Festival

The Moon Festival is also known as Lantern Festival or Mid Autumn Festival. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th Moon and it is the 2nd most important festival to the Chinese New Year.

The Moon Festival is full of legendary stories. One of those stories is about Chang Er who flew to the moon. She has lived ever since there. You might see her dancing on the moon during the Moon Festival.

Different types of mooncakes
Different types of mooncakes

This is a time when the Chinese travel back to the families. If in case families can not unite, they will watch together the full moon while eating mooncake and think about each other. Not surprisingly it's also young lovers to find each other and spend time together watching the moon while eating mooncake.

Mooncake
Mooncake

Because of the amounts of ingredients mooncakes are typically not cheap. The mooncakes as in the above picture cost about RM 5 to RM 10 (US $1-2) per piece depending on quality and ingredients.

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