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The Mooncake Wellington, from Hong Kong bakery Phoebe’s Kitchen, is one of the more out-there mooncake flavours of recent years. Delicious as they may be, can iterations like this even be called mooncakes? Photo: Phoebe’s Kitchen
Opinion
On the Menu
by Charmaine Mok
On the Menu
by Charmaine Mok

With Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake flavours getting more outrageous, isn’t it time we went back to basics?

  • Traditional mooncakes, proper ones, take a lot of crafting, so please stop calling any round puck, such as one filled with beef Wellington or caviar, a mooncake
  • Yes, there may be lots of calories in a classic lotus seed paste and salted egg yolk mooncake, but is that reason enough to treat it with disdain?
Charmaine Mok
Charmaine Mok
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Every year I feel compelled to defend the mooncake’s honour. The hate towards this traditional Mid-Autumn sweet tends to come around annually, often to the tune of:

“They’re too sweet!” “Who eats them anyway?” “Don’t you know how many calories are in a slice?” “I just don’t get the point of them.”

Some of these naysayers give the modern custard mooncake – defined by a thin, crumbly, cookie crust and a creamy, eggy centre – a free pass, though, citing it as an example of pastry evolution – an improved specimen far superior to the old-fashioned, stodgy lotus seed mooncakes.

One of the most famous examples of the new guard is luxury hotel The Peninsula Hong Kong’s Spring Moon custard mooncake, co-created in 1986 by chef Yip Wing-wah – it’s described as “blending Eastern traditions with Western culinary skills” – and remains the gold standard for the genre.
The Peninsula’s Spring Moon mini egg custard mooncakes have been a Mid-Autumn Festival hit in Hong Kong since they were created in 1986. Photo: The Peninsula

Back when it was created, the custard mooncake was seen as novel and exciting when every other traditional mooncake purveyor was fighting for the title of the best.

Today, it is often imitated; it also costs HK$638 (around US$80) for a box of eight mini custard mooncakes – nearly HK$80 a piece – which makes them a culinary status symbol.

A mooncake with caviar and truffle from Hong Kong’s Royal Caviar Club.

In tandem, the trend for snowy mooncakes – where a chilled, glutinous rice flour skin replaces the classic pastry – made popular by Hong Kong bakery Taipan in the late 1980s, has largely faded.

Likewise, ice cream mooncakes and chocolate mooncakes are now seen to be no better than just ice cream or chocolate.

A few years back, there was a horrifying rise in increasingly unhinged “mooncakes” that diverged so far from the original that it was necessary to use quotation marks when referring to them.

I’m talking about beef Wellington “mooncakes”, and over-the-top caviar, lobster and truffled potato “mooncakes” that cost up to HK$1,800 for a box of four.
Hong Kong Royal Caviar Club’s mochi-style mooncake containing six grams (0.2oz) of Imperial Ossetra caviar and either cream cheese or Madagascan vanilla. Photo: Royal Caviar Club
The race for innovation continues unabated. This year, more chefs got in the game too – in Bangkok, dessert restaurant Kyo Roll En by award-winning pastry chef Dej Kewkacha worked with top names including Thitid ‘Ton’ Tassanakajohn of one-Michelin-star Le Du, also voted Asia’s Best Restaurant, Pichiya ‘Pam’ Soontornyanakij of one-Michelin-star Potong, and Thomas and Mathias Sühring of two-Michelin-star Sühring.

Of the four creations, chef Pam’s may be the closest to tradition – unsurprising given her expertise is blending Thai and Chinese cuisine – with a sweet red bean paste paired with sweet-savoury fish floss. But the German Sühring twins’ Black Forest creation is essentially, well, a Black Forest cake in the shape of a mooncake.

Back in Hong Kong, new iterations of mooncake flavours will make your head spin – there are mooncakes inspired by egg waffles, matcha lava cakes and brownies.
Mini custard lava mooncakes by Hong Kong cake shop Royal Delights. Photo: Royal Plaza Hotel

Fillings range from fresh fruits like strawberries and mangoes to sticky toffee and salted caramel. There are figs, dates, coffee, lychee rose custard, kumquats, crystallised ginger and molten black sesame.

Even the most traditional of brands, Dashijie, went a little left of field this year with an Ocean’s Treasure creation blending salty and sweet, with dried shrimp and dried scallops melded into the white lotus seed paste.
Having received these much coveted mooncakes over the years, I can deny it no longer – all I want is a perfectly rendered white lotus seed mooncake, shiny with lard, studded with two velvety, oily salted egg yolks as intensely golden as the setting sun.
Traditional Hong Kong bakery Dashijie released a special edition Ocean Treasure mooncake this year, containing white lotus seed mixed with dried shrimp, dried scallop and salted egg yolk. Photo: Dashijie

I have a friend, a fellow food writer, who will make the trek to Fanling, in Hong Kong’s New Territories, every year to collect handmade mooncakes (baked in a charcoal oven) from Yan Lee Cake Shop, an old-school Hong Kong bakery that has been around since 1961.

There, they make everything by hand, and without preservatives. To meet demand during mooncake season, they suspend production of all other products for four weeks leading up to Mid-Autumn Festival.

The bakery started taking pre-orders on 29 June, with pickups available between 1 and 28 September – by the time you read this, it may already be too late to get your hands on a box.

For me, Mid-Autumn Festival is all about the taste and texture of a lotus seed mooncake, shared with family and matched with a strong, hot cup of tea like Puer. Not a chocolate truffle or mango custard mochi masquerading as a mooncake.

Traditional mooncakes, it seems, are now the novel variety.

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