Why people eat mooncakes

They've been around for so long. Over the years, mooncakes have evolved and been filled with everything from alcoholic infusions, ice cream and jellies to red velvet, rum raisin and tiramisu. Snow skin mooncakes, which are chilled and made with a mochi-like dough, are also a popular alternative to baked mooncakes.

Another mooncake growing in popularity is the pastry mooncake , which has a light, flaky puff pastry surrounding the egg yolk. Sheng Kee Bakery , based in Brisbane, California for the last four decades, ships baked mooncakes to all 50 states and also offers nontraditional baked goods like tea mooncakes and egg yolk, green bean and taro pastries.

Mooncakes range in size from large to small. It's a pretty large size mooncake … but the trend is actually moving away from large mooncakes and going more towards small mooncakes and other pastries. Nuyen and her family sell their limited-batch mooncakes to friends and customers in the Chicago-area through word of mouth. Their business has grown significantly since Nuyen started her food blog, Bun Bo Bae. In , Nuyen estimated that they sold between mooncakes each week for five weeks.

The central theme surrounding mooncakes and the Mid-Autumn Festival is that of community. For Nuyen, the holiday is a special time to spend with family.

So the most fun part is getting to see my mom every year There's nothing more valuable than getting to see my mom for that amount of time and connecting with her through her heritage. And people will light lanterns and kids will go out for the parade. And it's been a lot of fun seeing what the holiday means for different Asian cultures. I don't think it's a children's holiday in China. The most used ingredients include lotus seed paste, melon seed paste, ham, chicken, duck, roast pork, mushrooms, and egg yolks.

Cantonese-style mooncakes taste sweet. This style is the typical variation in North China. It originated in Beijing and Tianjin. It features the delicate use of sweetness and meticulous decoration. The common proportion of pastry and filling for Beijing-style mooncakes is Suzhou-style mooncakes Su mooncakes for short represent the Yangtze Delta region around Shanghai. Su mooncakes appeared more than a thousand years ago. They are well known throughout China for their layers of flaky pastry and generous allotment of sugar and lard.

There are both sweet and savory Suzhou mooncakes. Chaoshan-style mooncakes have a distinct crust. They are larger than most other mooncakes.

The most commonly used fillings are mung bean paste, and black bean and potato paste. Ham mooncakes are delicious with fillings of diced ham and sweet honey. The flavor are both sweet and a little bit salty.

Flowers are popular in Yunnan as cake fillings. Fresh roses or other edible flowers are wrapped in the pastry skin of flower mooncakes.

Ice-skin mooncakes were first popular among Hong Kongers. The skin of the mooncakes is not made of ice. They got this name because their skins are white, and are not baked in an oven, but stored in a refrigerator instead.

The cost of a mooncake is actually quite low for one mooncake. But mooncakes in beautiful and luxury packs are sold in a higher price. Mooncake boxes can be very beautiful, and sometimes the boxes are more expensive than the mooncakes themselves!

Different brands have their own unique designation of packaging, mostly colorful tins and card boxes. Mooncakes are generously packaged in their small-case-sized gift boxes. Typically there are several small boxes on a piece of yellow or red silk. Each small box contains a mooncake in a transparent air-tight wrapper, with an anti-oxidation sachet to keep it fresh.

One month before Mid-Autumn Festival you can see mooncakes everywhere in China. In China, celebrations center around mooncakes and the consumption thereof. Mooncakes are traditionally round palm-sized cakes with a red bean or lotus seed paste filling and an egg yolk in the middle.

The yolk symbolizes the moon and is linked to good luck. She sought refuge in the moon when her consort, Hou Yi the Lord Archer , discovered she had stolen the drug of immortality given to him by the gods. This style of moon cakes is famous for the craftsmanship and careful choice of materials. Having two tastes of sweet and savory, it features a thin and soft crust with a delicate pattern, as well as an exquisite and portable package. Ham moon cakes and flower moon cakes are regarded as typical representatives of Yunnan-Style Mooncakes that are popular in Yunnan and the surrounding area.

Ham Moon cakes are filled with special salted ham in Yunnan, and the aroma of the ham emanates through the pastry crust. Suzhou-Style moon cakes have two flavors including sweet and savory types. Sweet moon cakes are filled with rose petals, Osmanthus, nuts, and seeds, and savory moon cakes are filled with ham, pork and shrimp meat. The main features of Snow-skin Moon cakes are that they non-baked and kept in a refrigerator. The crust is made from glutinous rice, and looks like snow.

Then people add some colorful juice to the crust, allowing for diverse tastes with the different appearances. Fruit and vegetable moon cakes are filled with fruits and vegetables, and taste soft and smooth. Fillings include strawberry, melon, pineapple, lychee and orange. This type of moon cakes just uses the moon cakes mold; the crust is made of chocolate and the fillings are totally ice cream.

You may create the stereotypical mooncakes with lotus paste and a salted egg core.