Mid-Autumn Festival: Mooncake

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.

No-Bake Snow Skin Mooncake
Photo courtesy of Rasa Malaysia

There are various type of mooncake available, the 2 major types are the traditional mooncake (below) and the no-bake snow skin mooncake (above). No-bake snow skin mooncake, made from glutinous rice flour & molded in special molds. It has a elastic, chewy and soft skin. Eaten cold and fresh.

Many years ago, all mooncakes usually 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, every one can afford to buy and give to friends and family. There are also lots of ready-made mooncake paste available in the market for those who would like to mold and bake the traditional mooncakes. Buying ready-made mooncake paste really helps in shorten the baking time of the traditional mooncake.

Below is the store-bought machine-made mass-production single egg yoke white lotus seed flavor.

Traditional 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.

Mini Mooncake