Later this week, millions of ethnically Chinese people will celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival by getting together and having large family meals. Fast forward to the following week, millions upon millions of gifted “moon cakes” will be rotting away in the trash. Even the ridiculously cute and ornate ones.
Traditionally the Mid-Autumn Festival, a harvest-worship and moon-worship festival, meant terrible congestion in Beijing. This is because everyone is trying to deliver boxes of “moon cakes” to show their respect and express their good wishes to their friends, families and work relations. The roundness of the cakes represents completeness and unity.
Over the years, “moon cakes” have become the epitome of the Mid-Autumn Festival. In Chinatowns all over the world, Chinese bakeries will start to dole out tins and special boxes of these round pastries. Just walk into a Taipan Bakery in New York City’s Chinatown or Flushing and you can see piles of these cakes.
These moon cakes can either be bought or hand made. Once upon a time I even used to help my granny make moon cakes.
Despite the touching feel-good meaning of the cakes, they aren’t very delicious. Effectively they’re a thin pastry/crust that envelops a paste type filling. These fillings include everything from sweet to savoury with fillings often made up of red bean paste. Sometimes these fillings also include salted egg yolk… Yes, an egg yolk.
Moon cakes, of course, aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. They definitely aren’t mine. However, like all things in China, moon cakes have also become a form of artistic medium with people creating cool and cute designs with them. Finnish mobile gaming company Rovio has even come out with their own Angry Birds-themed moon cakes!
Comments
11 responses to “The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival Brings Awful Tasting Game-Based Cakes”
I’ll be sure to do that…
Yep, I’ll swing by tomorrow… Wait… This is Australian Kotaku?
WAIT A SEC! THIS ISN’T EVEN ABOUT GAMES!
I quite like them! I can demolish two whole boxes by myself, easy.
heart attack in 3…..2……1…..
Moon cakes are awesome, i have been getting them for the last 5 years 😀
Moon cakes are amazing!
Yeah, don’t know what the authour is on about. Moon cake is awesome.
There are certainly a lot of different types of Mooncake around.. not all of them are wonderful. The Snow Mooncake has seen a rise in popularity lately but we don’t think much of them. Also various western inspired flavours have been gaining in popularity too (chocolate, coffee etc).. haven’t found a chocolate one yet.. but maybe they taste better than the traditional lotus paste ones that are just way too sweet for me. 🙂
Give me original any time! I grew up on it – red bean 2 yolk, lotus paste 2 yolk.
Some of the new flavours are disgusting – green tea, pandan, the chocolate flavour. Yuck. the density of the paste doesn’t match with those flavours. I blame the rise of the fancy Taiwanese bakeries like Breadtop, 85degrees etc…not everything they make is sugary goodness.
Im Asian. Mooncakes taste terrible. Sweet/Savory doesnt matter. I’ve had them boxed, fresh and directly in china. None of them are something you would go back for over ice cream or apple pie