Based in Manila, Philippines, Dessert Comes First is a chronicle of the food-obsessed food writer, Lori Baltazar. This website is all about desserts, restaurants, coffee, and the pleasures of homebaking. Read more about me Swoon for the moon (cake)
Thu, October 20th of 2005
8:00 pm
The earliest memory I have of mooncakes is my dad bringing them home in a beautiful red metal box with gold trim. I didn’t particularly care what was inside the box — I just knew that I wanted the box.
Since then, most of the mooncakes I’ve received or bought for myself have been wrapped in a simple red paper box with Chinese characters on the front. I’ve never received mooncakes wrapped in swanky packaging. These days, I’m more interested in what’s inside the box.
Originally a revolutionary tool used to incite rebellion, some mooncakes are now unrecognizable from the traditional bean paste. I’ve read articles describing how mooncakes are now crammed with every imaginable filler: kiwi, egg custard, and more popularly ice cream, ginseng, rose, green tea and brandy. This year’s trends in juice bars have given rise to both tomato and carrot paste flavors. Sounds delightful. I think.
The mooncake pictured here is from Chinatown, given to me recently by my good friend, Kaie. It’s my favorite flavor — lotus cream with double yolk. Given my shameless lust for eggs, I fervently wish that someone would come up with a mooncake that was all yolk. Oh yeah, heart attack city I know, but definitely something to hope for.
The sight and smell of this round pastry-covered cake sends me; I actually have my own little ritual for eating a mooncake: I carefully cut it in the middle — hoping, hoping — that I slice it just right so that I get a yolk on each side. Then I cut each half in half again, so now I have four little mooncakes. Then I eat all the lotus cream first, savoring the salty-sweet paste taste that lingers on my tongue. All the while, I never let my eyes wander from those yellow orbs glinting at me like golden eyeballs. I save and eat the yolks for last — they are soft with somewhat crusty edges. Within a few blinks, those golden eyeballs are gone.
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We’ve never been a mooncake kind of household. So I only got to taste my first mooncake when I started working and all I can say is that it’s like — one big giant hopia? Sometimes with a red egg-type substance in the middle?
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Comment by wysgal — October 20, 2005 @ 8:54 am
i love mooncakes! the combination of almonds and lotus cream is heaven for me. kinda pricey though.
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Comment by puFF — October 20, 2005 @ 9:32 am
Oi! Mooncakes! I’ve always been a sucker for the ones with lotus cream and two golden egg yolks. It’s a seriously indulgent treat I look forward to every year.
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Comment by Midge — October 20, 2005 @ 12:07 pm
You should have a Chinese dessert fest with mooncake, hopia, and tikoy! (On a sidenote, have you tried banana-flavored tikoy? Yummy!)
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Comment by Ton-ton — October 20, 2005 @ 1:01 pm
I was never really into mooncakes till now. I was not really expose to the different kind of mooncakes that are available other than the ones you see at a local Chinese market. I think mooncakes are somewhat similar to hopia but the chinese made it more interesting with flavors and opus.
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Comment by Anonymous — October 20, 2005 @ 10:50 pm
If you have to chance to be in Singapore or Hong Kong during the mooncake season (around late September to October), visit their bakeshops and try their mooncakes –
My brothers lOVE mooncake and they’ve brought home snowskin mooncake from Singapore (kinda like mochi, but with lotus cream) — yum!
My brother recently purchased a cookbook for mooncakes and has been asking me to make one. O_o
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Comment by Tin (ni Johann) — October 21, 2005 @ 6:09 am
oh lori, you really have captured the beauty of a mooncake…
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Comment by J — October 22, 2005 @ 2:05 am
in singapore and thailand, durian filled mooncakes are very popular. in hk, i got to try a savory type of mooncake with chinese ham/sausage filling and very flaky crust. it had a very lardy consistency and i got dizzy from probably ingesting all that cholesterol but i have to say it was quite good. my favorite is still the lotus seed paste with double yolk
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Comment by anonymous paul — October 25, 2005 @ 4:28 pm
I don’t really like Mooncakes but the mooncake with ice cream filling from Swensen’s (Singapore) is so irresistable!! yummy!
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Comment by Charmed — December 21, 2005 @ 2:56 pm
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Comment by . — June 26, 2006 @ 3:35 am