When caviar mochi mooncakes and Instagrammable custard pastries take over our feeds, we risk forgetting the humble beauty of the original
This year, the mooncake scene has gone off the rails.The Peninsula’s famed Spring Moon custard mooncakes, for the first time in their decades-long history, are going heart-shaped; snowy mooncake purveyors are one-upping each other with increasingly molten and oozy fillings, and filling them with chopped abalone; and 2020 is the year we also witnessed the birth of ‘the world’s first caviar mooncake’, an ostentatious creation filled with lobster and black truffles. Creativity is at an all-time high where mooncakes are concerned, and food lovers who aren’t necessarily sticklers for traditions are in for a treat with so many variations of the sweet pastry on the shelves this year.
How did we stray this far? A classic Cantonese-style mooncake, traditionally a dense pastry filled with sweetened lotus seed paste and salted duck egg yolks, is the star of the Mid-Autumn Festival table in Hong Kong. Yet the traditional, old-school variety (scroll down to the bottom of this story for our top 4 picks) has slowly fallen out of favour, even maligned for its high fat and high sugar content, with a new generation wooed by newer and “healthier” varieties.
Related: This Year’s Most Creative Mooncakes Are Filled With Caviar, Truffle, And Abalone
Traditional Cantonese mooncakes are typically made with two crucial components: the pastry exterior, known as the “skin”, and the filling, which includes salted duck egg yolk with a sweet nut or bean paste, such as lotus seed, adzuki bean, or mung bean, with lotus seed paste the most popular and regarded as a standard. There are two varieties of lotus seed paste: the pale ‘white’ lotus seed paste made with granulated sugar and ‘yellow’ lotus seed paste with brown sugar. The filling also includes whole salted duck egg yolks and occasionally pitted olive kernels which add texture to the filling.
Related: Where To Buy The Best Luxury Mooncakes In Hong Kong In 2020