Everything on mooncakes (sweet/savoury), have you tasted them?

I like the soft and tender kind, but I know some people prefer the crispy and hard version. I like egg roll biscuit too. Among all mentioned above, eating egg tart fresh is the most important.

I first found mooncakes at the Hing Shing pastry shop in Boston Chinatown right down the street from the Kung Fu School run by Master Bow Sim Mark, Donnie Yenโ€™s mother. Now I buy mini lotus seed paste versions less than 3 miles from my NJ home.

Cool. Never been to Boston Chinatown. Is it close to Harvard Square?
I just looked up Amazon. Now you can buy mooncakes from Amazon and even cheaper than many storesโ€ฆScary.

https://www.amazon.com/Kee-Wah-Bakery-Mooncake-่›‹้ปƒ็™ฝ่“ฎ่“‰ๆœˆ้ค…/dp/B00F54SELI/ref=sr_1_4_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1538087826&sr=8-4

Wow. That was in 1979.

I just looked it up and they are still there!

And no, it is not that close to Harvard, but from here in NJ it seems like it :grin:

Hopia is a mooncake like pastry introduced to the Philippines by the Fujianese immigrants .There are 2 kinds, the thin flaky one and the heavier dough ones which the Filipinos call Japanese Hopia. There are many kinds of filling, bung beans, ube( purple yam) , savory pork etc.
In the Philippines, they are available year round.

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Sorry. I have only been to Boston once and only for a short duration. My entire free-time experience in Boston is the Harvard Square. :sweat_smile:

Yep, it looks like Hing Shing Pastry is still there.

box of haxin mooncake -gift from former colleague who just returned from Shanghaid it
I do not know if she p urchased it from Shanghai or locallyope t hey are my favorites which are the salted duck eggs with lotus seed

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We got a box of moon cakes as gifts this year, and its made by one of the better local Cantonese restaurants. Instead of lotus seed paste, the center is made up of smoked ham, egg yolk and five nuts. So its half savory and half sweet. The taste was pretty good, though without a bunch of oil in the lotus seed paste, it felt pretty dry also.

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Mine was not labeled. as to its contents. I typically cut them I into quarters, only eat a quarter at a time. Received this gift after buying a tub of Dalmatia fig spread and brie. So, that will have to be eaten first. after I get to make them sometime today perhaps. Also got some fresh figs as a gift from a conservatorโ€™s tree. He prepared some served with goat cheese with some sweet craisins knowing I had an appointment very early and had to leave my house by 7:00AM with a 2 hour drive to consult him. I declined bec I do no like the taste of goat cheese. However, the taste of the figs given were bland compared to the Sunny Fruit organic dried nature smyrna figs. . I buy and hoard them from Costco thinking each time when I visit Costco they may discontinue them/ They are really sweet, moist with no preservative.

had the first mooncake today
My Luck, it is filled with lotus seed paste and has an egg yolk!
DELICIOUS
I ate the whole cake!!!

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I thought about getting some mooncakes from Koi Palace too, but I have tasted them and simply did not like the quality. I like the restaurant, but the mooncakes not so much.

Apparently, this year โ€œheart flow custardโ€ mooncake is trendy, saw that in several places in Hong Kong. Got a box of Wing Wah at the airport. Normally, wanted to wait around moon festival, but couldnโ€™t resist the temptation!

Smallest mooncake I ever had, even smaller than the ice skin onesโ€ฆ the cake was basically enveloping the yolk with very few custardโ€ฆ tried it with and without microwave heating. Like it more slightly hot.

While I like it, but I donโ€™t feel it very mooncake-like, but rather a dim sum, soft custard bun. I read Kowloon hotel is doing one with flaky skin, if anyone is heading there.


Photo from Openrice

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Those looked tasty, too bad they werenโ€™t โ€™t available back in July.

I saw that last year and heard that the โ€˜lava custardโ€™ was very popular. Those boxes of mooncakes cost at least 2x as much, especially if you want one of the big HK brand names like Mei Sum and Wing Wah. I splurged and bought a Macanese brand. Honestly, I find them way overhyped. Mine looks more like your Wing Wah mooncakes. They really donโ€™t flow as dramatically, as your as your picture of the flowing custard buns (lau sa bau).

I think they taste more like a regular custard bun (nai wong bau) than a real mooncake, except with the pastry skin. Could be my brand, but I think it needs more of the saltiness from the egg yolk. Thatโ€™s one of the things I do enjoy about mooncakes is the dense lotus seed paste, but tempered by some of the saltiness of the yolk.

I usually wait 'til the end of the season, and scoop up a box at discount for my mooncake fixing. :stuck_out_tongue:

I put the cake in microwave for 10 seconds as instructed, it doesnโ€™t flow that much.

No, Wing Wah too, the yolk wasnโ€™t salty like the preserved duck yolk, I thought I was eating hen yolk, until I saw the ingredient list. I think it is popular due to not very sweet for its healthy aspect. But the size, honestly, so tiny (maybe the volume of 2 traditional mooncakes) for $240 HKD (around 30 USD), itโ€™s extremely expensive. But looks like the mini size is the trend.

I didnโ€™t even bother to look for instructions. LOL, Iโ€™m used to cracking open and just eating. Iโ€™ll give that a try tonight. Yeah, mine are mini; saw another couple who wanted to try them but opened the box and said โ€œOh my gosh โ€“ so tiny. What a ripoff!โ€ and they walked away. :joy:

Make sense. I didnโ€™t see it until I ate 2.

I believe โ€œflowing sand custardโ€ mooncakes have been trending for awhile now. I donโ€™t care. I still like my double egg yolk lotus seed paste mooncakes.

I finally noticed similar instructions on the bottom of my box, but seriously, how many people flip the box over to read this on their moon cakes? :confused:

My brand inexplicably gave a time of 4-6 seconds. Did that 3x and it wasnโ€™t flowing either - primarily because 6 seconds is barely enough to warm anything! The machine is just getting going at that point. They should just write 15 seconds on medium or med-high to prevent an exploding moon cake.

Today, Sunday 12 Sep on the Gregorian calendar, coincides with Day 6 of the Eighth Chinese Lunar Month - 9 days to go before we celebrate the Mooncake Festival! :grin:

One of the oldest Chinese traditions, the Mooncake Festival originated during the ๐™๐ก๐จ๐ฎ ๐ƒ๐ฒ๐ง๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฒ (๐Ÿ๐ŸŽ๐Ÿ’๐Ÿ“ ๐๐‚ โ€“ ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ ๐๐‚), over 3,000 years ago.

The term โ€œMid-Autumnโ€ first appeared in the book, The Rites of Zhou (ๅ‘จ็คผ), written during the Warring States Period (475 โ€“ 221 BC). But at that time the term was only related to the time and season; the festival didnโ€™t exist yet at that point.

Moon-gazing was a popular past-time during the ๐“๐š๐ง๐  ๐ƒ๐ฒ๐ง๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฒ (๐Ÿ”๐Ÿ๐Ÿ– ๐€๐ƒ - ๐Ÿ—๐ŸŽ๐Ÿ• ๐€๐ƒ).

It became a festival during the ๐’๐จ๐ง๐  ๐ƒ๐ฒ๐ง๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฒ (๐Ÿ—๐Ÿ”๐ŸŽ โ€“ ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ•๐Ÿ—), where the 15th day of the 8th lunar month was established as the โ€œMid-Autumn Festivalโ€. From then on, making prayer offerings to the moon was very popular, and has become a custom ever since.

Mooncakes made their appearance during the Mongol ๐˜๐ฎ๐š๐ง ๐ƒ๐ฒ๐ง๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฒ (๐Ÿ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ•๐Ÿ— ๐€๐ƒ -๐Ÿ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ”๐Ÿ– ๐€๐ƒ). Secret messages among the Han Chinese to rebel against their Mongol overlords were passed around inside mooncakes.

The Mooncake Festival, as it is known today, reached the peak of its popularity during the ๐Œ๐ข๐ง๐  and ๐๐ข๐ง๐  ๐ƒ๐ฒ๐ง๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐ž๐ฌ, spanning ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ”๐Ÿ– ๐€๐ƒ - ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ—๐Ÿ๐Ÿ ๐€๐ƒ.

In China, the Mid-Autumn Festival was gazetted a public holiday in 2008, 3 millennia after it started.

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