Mooncake Festival – Happy Moon Day!

Tomorrow is Moon Day aka Mid-Autumn Festival in Chinese, when the moon is at its brightest for the entire year. We celebrate by eating mooncake made of lotus seed paste with a salty egg yolk inside. This is the story I heard while growing up.  “Overrun by the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the Chinese threw off their oppressors in 1368 AD. It is said that mooncakes – which the Mongols did not eat – were the perfect vehicle for hiding and passing along plans for the rebellion. Families were instructed not to eat the mooncakes until the day of the moon festival, which is when the rebellion took place.” Taken from http://chinesefood.about.com/od/mooncake/a/moonfestival.htm

This is the first year that I bought my own box of mooncakes since being married. I went to Ranch 99 to pick the perfect box of mooncakes. There is such a good variety of flavors now like red bean paste, pineapple, light lotus seed, and with or without yolks. And if you get the ones with the yolk, you have a choice of 1, 2 or 3 yolks inside each mooncake!

There are too many choices to make. I tried my hardest to remember which mooncake brand my dad usually buys but my memory was fuzzy. There are no brand names prominently displayed on the boxes, just colorful designs like a lady with a fan or a painted lily. Mooncakes come in fancy boxes with 4 well proportioned mooncakes. They are meant for sharing so don’t try to eat a whole mooncake by yourself. Mooncakes are quite fattening. Try cutting them up in quarters or eighths. That little piece of mooncake is filling.

This is the brand of mooncakes that I liked the most. It comes from Macau which is across the water from Hong Kong. The lotus paste is light, moist, yet rich enough for my taste. This seemingly innocent box of mooncakes costed $27.99! It’s quite steep but you can only get it once a year.

Yesterday while I was at Costco, they had sampling for mooncake, with 4 different flavors per box. And it was only $8.88. I regret not getting a box. Anyway, Happy Moon Day!

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