11 Sep 11

Mid-Autumn Festival: Mooncake

Snow Skin Moon Cake RecipeNon-Bake Snow Skin Mooncake
Photo courtesy of Rasa Malaysia
Get the recipe here.

Every year, Chinese celebrates Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節) on the 15th day of the 8th Chinese lunar month. This year it falls on 12 September 2011, which is tomorrow. To know more about Mid Autumn Festival, its story and how Chinese celebrates it in different countries, click this wikipedia link.

There are various type of mooncake available, the 2 major types are the traditional mooncake (below) and the snow skin mooncake (above). Many years ago, basically all mooncakes came from homemade. I used to help my mom in making mooncakes to sell to relatives and friends during my teenage years. That was when my mom made some extra income for the household in a year. Due to age, long hour of standing and highly exhaustion from knocking the heavy wooden mold to get the mooncake out, my mom can no longer make them for selling. Occasionally, when ever she feels like baking some, she makes some for us. Hope that next year I will get a chance to bake with her and share her recipe here.

Now, there are so many brands and types of mooncakes available in the market, everyone can afford to buy and gifted to friends and family. Below is the store-bought machine-made mass-production single egg yoke white lotus seed flavor.

traditional mooncakeTraditional Baked Mooncake

To free the hassle to needing a knife to cut the 4″ mooncake into 8 pieces for serving, sometime mooncakes come in mini size, just enough to serve a person.

Baked mini mooncakeMini Mooncake

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11 comments... read them below or add one

  1. Iryna says:September 12, 2011 at 10:16 am

    I have never tried Mooncake before. Looks so pretty!

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  2. Iryna says:September 12, 2011 at 12:13 pm

    Will do if I ever come across it. I love trying new food. Thank you!

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  4. Allie says:March 25, 2012 at 11:59 am

    Just wondering, are the snow skin moon cakes sweeter than traditional moon cakes? I hate to say it, but I bought a traditional one from a shop in china town, boston, and I wasnt a fan. It was the nuttyness of the lotus seed. I guess it was too different from what my taste buds are used to.

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    • Craft Passion says:March 25, 2012 at 12:30 pm

      Allie, this is a tough question and it is hard to answer…. well, put it this way, generally, mooncake is a sweet dessert and the sweetness depends on the sugar content in it. Normally, homemade mooncake is not so sweet as those sell in the market.
      As for snowskin mooncake, the sweetness typically comes from the paste filling. If you can get less-sugar mooncake paste than the mooncake will have less sweetness in it.
      Imagine, some people also find French macaron is too sweet to accept but other people might love it a lot. May be the mooncake you bought is just too sweet to a general taste bud. Ask for less sugar mooncake if possible when you are at the mooncake stall again :)

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  5. Faith Epp via Facebook says:September 29, 2012 at 11:58 pm

    I prob had these growing up. My mom had a restaurant in Chinatown, Honolulu. All my friends were Chinese children, we played together all the time. I used to love eating cakes like these.

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  6. Craft Passion via Facebook says:September 30, 2012 at 12:00 am

    that’s great, Faith! I am Chinese too :)

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  7. Faith Epp via Facebook says:September 30, 2012 at 12:11 am

    I’m not Chinese, but grew up with them. I used to be really scared of the dragon on Chinese New Year’s.

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  8. Ann says:October 9, 2012 at 8:18 pm

    It looks delicios, and the recipe is quite easy. But the ingredients are unavailable in my country (Poland)
    Now I know what to buy as a “must” while visiting NY in the future :)

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