Most memorable mooncakes

During every Mid-Autumn Festival there's bound to be a least one news article commenting on the gluttony of custom to give mooncakes and much food is wasted from the mooncakes that are thrown out after the celebration. But on the positive side of this custom, I've recently heard of a new trend for people to donate unopened mooncakes (ones w/o boxes are fine too) to charities that redistributes them to the homeless or those who couldn't afford them.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a much bigger celebration here in HK than it is back in Toronto. Families get together and all go out for dinner. Afterwards dinner people will head to one of the many lantern festivals across the city (see my earlier blog post). And there's even a public holiday celebrating the day after the festival. But one of the best parts of this year's festival was all the mooncakes I ended up trying. In Toronto, I would have shared a traditional mooncake (w/lotus pasted and egg yolk) with family. This year I ended up eating lots of "mini mooncakes" that one could finish alone or share between two people.

Here's a list of my 7 favourite mooncakes:

#7 Taipan's mango and pomelo snowy mooncake

I believe Taipan was the first company to sell "snowy" mooncakes. "Snowy" mooncakes are basically frozen mochi desserts. I thought the filling of this tasted pretty good, reminiscent of the mango pomelo sago (楊枝金露) dessert. But I didn't really like their take on the pastry or the green bean filling. The pastry was a bit too dry and the filling was a bit too powdery for my tastes.

#6 Maxim's mango snowy mooncake

I was surprised the by the strong mango taste that came through this "snowy" mooncake. I guess they must have mix some mango purée into the pastry as well. This turned out to be a nice mango dessert. The filling is a mixture of green bean paste and mango purée, but the green bean taste was overshadowed by the mango in the filling and pastry.

#5 Arome's purple yam "snowy" mooncake

I really liked this version of the "snowy" mooncake. The pastry was soft and chewy and the yam filling was sweet and fragrant. This snowy mooncake also had a green bean filling but it had a nice creamy texture to it. The whole thing reminded me of a mochi actually.

#3 Kee Wah's traditional lotus seed paste mooncake

This was probably the largest mooncake I had this season, and took CharK and me about a week to finish it. We divided the mooncake into eighths and had one piece each time. It tasted pretty good--the pastry was flaky and the salted egg wasn't overly dried. I think it was a bit saltier but less sweet than the Wing Wah's traditional lotus paste mooncakes I use to eat in Toronto.

#2 Haagen Daaz's ice cream "mooncake"

These stylish desserts are pretty much chocolate coated ice cream bars which were molded into the shape of mooncakes. So not only were they very pretty, but they were also quite delicious--just like Haagen Daaz's regular ice cream. The strawberry "mooncake" I had tasted a bit like the strawberry Pocky sticks.

#1 Kee Wah's egg custard mooncake

These mini mooncakes are made with a traditional pastry and filled with an egg custard filling. The filling was rich and the pastry was flaky-yummy! Even though the "snowy" mooncakes were similar size to the egg custard mooncakes, the latter was much more filling. But the egg custard mooncakes weren't overly sweet as egg custard buns sometimes are, so this was a nice alternative to the tradition lotus paste filled mooncakes.

I felt really lucky this year to have been able to try so many varieties of mooncakes. I started eating the snowy mooncakes well before the actual Mid-Autumn festival, moving onto the ice cream ones as they were a gift, and finally ended up sharing a box of the egg custard and traditional lotus seed mooncakes with family during the celebrations.

There are still many more versions of mooncakes that are sold in HK and China,  including outrageous flavours like Durian and salted pork. But I'll leave those for another year...

Let's end with some trivia--do you know where the traditional of mooncakes came from?
A popular legend is that mooncakes were used as a means of communication to overthrow China's ruling dynasty Mongol dynasty, 元朝, (1271–1368 AD).