Cantonese baked mooncake with egg yolk.
KUCHING (Sept 1): Mid-Autumn Festival traditionally falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. On the Gregorian calendar, the festival will be celebrated on Sept 10 (Saturday) this year.
The festival has been celebrated in China and by the Chinese diaspora around the world for centuries, a tradition that is derived from the custom of worshipping the autumn moon to thank it for the year’s bountiful harvest. Its significance to the community is second only to the Lunar New Year Festival.
The full moon is also the symbol of family reunions in Chinese culture, and the most revered moon is the mid-autumn moon when it is supposedly at its brightest and most beautiful.
Like most festivals, food is also an integral part of the Mid-Autumn. The most representative food for this festival is the mooncake, hence why the festival is also known as Mooncake Festival. The round shape and sweet flavours of this traditional treat symbolise completeness and sweetness in life.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, people eat mooncakes together with their family after a reunion dinner, or they gift them to relatives, friends or colleagues to express their best wishes and appreciation.
This is also the time when brands showcase their seasonal products by holding fairs and promotions everywhere.
There are many regional variations of mooncakes, depending on which part of China they originated from or which dialect group made them.
In Malaysia, the most ubiquitous type is the Cantonese or Guangdong-style mooncake.
Cantonese mooncakes are traditionally round, but can also be square. They are baked until golden brown in colour, and are embossed on the top, usually with auspicious Chinese characters or floral designs.
Lotus seed paste filling is the most well-known one for Cantonese-style mooncakes, with or without salted egg yolk. However, various fillings from beans to nuts to meats are available.
Red bean, mung bean, pandan, matcha green tea and chocolate are some of the fillings commonly found in Cantonese-style mooncakes here.
Another popular variation of mooncake here is the Teochew-style mooncake. This is a traditional flaky pastry with a distinctive spiral and layered crust, baked to golden brown. Besides the traditional golden brown crust, some nowadays also feature colourful crusts to stand out from the rest.
Teochew mooncake.
Traditionally, the standard filling for this type of mooncake is yam paste, with a salted egg yolk as an option but modern versions tend to have a variety of flavours as well, notably black bean and mung bean.
There is a type of mooncake that looks similar to the Teochew-style one with its roundish and crisp appearance. The Shanghai-style mooncake has a smooth crust, unlike the layered crust of Teochew mooncake, and has a buttery taste. It is typically filled with lotus seed paste and one egg yolk. What sets it apart is the topping on the crust, as it is usually topped with sesame seeds or sunflower seeds.
Shanghai mooncake.
Also found in this part of the world is the Hakka variation, although not as popular as the other types. This type of mooncake is usually white in colour, and has a compressed and circular appearance, which makes it look like the full moon.
Made with cooked glutinous rice flour and sugar, it has a powdery and sweet texture. Its top is embossed with floral or animal designs.
Hakka mooncake.
A modern take on mooncakes are the non-baked ones known as snowskin mooncakes, which has its origin in Hong Kong. This type of mooncake sometimes looks similar to the baked ones in terms of patterns and designs on the shell.
Snowskin shell is made of glutinous rice flour, resulting in a soft and slightly chewy texture like mochi skin.
While it is often snow white in colour, hence its name, nowadays their makers tend to add fruit juice or food colouring to the shell to create a variety of appealing colours. Snowskin mooncakes are best served chilled, as the shells will soften if left at room temperature for too long.
Durian-flavoured snowskin mooncake.
Another modern type of mooncake is the jelly mooncake. It is usually made with agar-agar jelly and it has a firm texture. There are various flavours in the fillings, but fruits like dragonfruit and longan, and dried flowers like osmanthus and rose are often used. Like snowskin, this is best served chilled.
Other dialect groups also have their own style of mooncakes but these are rarely seen in the typical commercial mooncake fairs that spring up during this festive season.
Regional variations aside, there is no limit to creativity where fillings and flavours are concerned these days. Custard lava or cream cheese fillings oozing out of seemingly traditional baked mooncakes, pungent durian paste in both baked and snowskin mooncakes, and tapioca pearls popping out from jelly mooncakes are just some of the many kinds of mooncakes that can be found on sale during the month leading up to the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Mooncake with custard lava in its core.
Every year, consumers are getting more spoilt for choices as bakeries and brands keep rolling out new and artisanal flavours.
Some brands remember the needs of the health-conscious and try to cater to them by reducing the sugar content in the ingredients or by replacing sweet flavours with savoury ones. While traditional classics will continue to appeal to most people, the departure from the norm may be a delight to those with adventurous taste buds.
In other words, there is something for everybody to enjoy during the Mid-Autumn Festival.