Mooncake Season, Mooncakes of London
Mooncake Festival, officially known as The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on Saturday 10th September this year. This holiday celebrates the rice and fruit harvest and to ceremonies are held to vitalise and uplift the harvest to be as fruitful next year. That is what I’ve been told, but I know it more as a gathering for a dinner feast, to enjoy mooncakes and light paper lanterns under the moonlight. The day mooncake festival is held is said to be when the moon is the brightest and roundest, with the roundest of the moon representing strong family reunions.
To get into the spirit of mooncake celebrations, I’ve picked up some mooncakes around London. In the last couple of years, I noticed a spike in restaurants, hotels and bakeries getting creative and spicing up the traditional mooncake recipes. Growing up, family members would gift each other the Cantonese style mooncake with double salted egg yolk (to represent the moons), and lotus seed paste layered with golden brown soft sweet pastry. I’ve honestly never been that fussed about mooncakes. I find them rich, the same squishy texture with a slightly chalky and dry salted egg yolk. When I tried a snow skin mooncake for the first time, I thought ‘this is more like it, what a treat!’ but it was kind of rare to get that back then.
This year, I wanted to venture out of the ‘classic’ I have always and only known and treat my family and I to some real special ones, baked fresh and not shop bought in plastic packaging with a little plastic knife and toothpicks to help aid mooncakes into my mouth. I spent my Saturday picking up mooncakes around town from various sized businesses large and small, and very excited to welcome the mooncake season. I decided purely based on my passion for food and exploration to improve my writing to review these bad boys on Medium. This is in no way sponsored or paid to do this. Let the mooncake review sesh begin. Here’s my findings:
Yauatcha mixed set comes in a fairly nicely presented box, priced at £36 for 6 mooncakes (gulp!) consisting of 4 snowskin kaya mooncake and 4 baked custard mooncakes totalling to a lucky 8. I say nicely presented, I mean the mooncakes looked great in the box, but honestly the box design itself looked like they nabbed the design of Shutterstock. The design looked templated and generic, was hoping for something more special from Yauatcha. But hey, we’re not here for the box, we’re here for the mooncakes.
I’ll start with the Kaya snowskin mooncakes, filled with caramel like coconut jam. I was very excited to find out Yauatcha created Kaya flavoured ones this year, as I’ve recently gotten into Kaya through getting more in touch with my Malaysian side. The snowskin itself, delicate and soft–couldn’t fault it. The kaya flavours however, a little underwhelming. I definitely appreciate not going overboard with the sweetness as Kaya can sometimes feel like an instant toothache with how sweet it can be — plus I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but after having a bite I was surprised the Kaya flavours lacked and only had a hum of coconut. I was left unsure of it and something was missing.
Moving on to the baked sweet egg custard. I followed their instructions to pop them in the oven for 2–3 minutes for optimum tasting sesh, and that I definitely got. The egg custard filling — a perfect balance of sweet and savoury in combination with the beautiful golden pastry all crumbly and melty in my mouth. My eyes lit up like little moons and was pleasantly surprised how delicious these little morsels are.
I thought these little suckers were quite dear being one the small side but having had that egg custard mooncake, I thought but damn it is good. Also, however much I loved it and wanted more, I do think the portion is key to how much you enjoy it without overdoing it.
Starting off mixed reviewed, I bring out the bad boys from Bun House. Collected my Mid-Autumn Mooncake set from their sister restaurant, Wun’s tea room. The set are priced at £32 for four different flavoured mooncakes in designs shaped in a Chinese dancing lion and a Ruyi pattern symbolising longevity and prosperity. The set consists of a hand-woven basket packaging which gives off an instant wow factor. Beautiful packaging that feels so familiar and comforting, now this is something special. It comes with four mooncakes; sweet lotus, chestnut cream, red bean and egg custard. Heated these little goodies in the oven for around 2–3 minutes as well and was eager to put the Bun House’s egg custard head to head with Yauatcha. It’s close, I’m still umming and ahhing about it whilst I’m writing about it now. Bun House’s egg custard mooncake feels more traditional in the soft pastry, slightly sweeter egg custard and more familiar textures of a traditional mooncakes vs the crumbly textures I loved from the Yauatcha’s custard mooncake. I think it is somewhat unfair to compare as they are simply different styles.
Next up, red bean. My excitement for something different gradually came back to earth to appreciate the goodness of traditional flavours. Red bean tastes of comfort, familiarity and warmth. The filling is quite rich that I struggled on the second bite to want anymore but it’s definitely delicious and did not disappoint.
(I’ve kept chestnut cream and sweet lotus to enjoy with family, so haven’t been able to review these yet. To be add to this review after the holidays, if Medium allows)
Moving on to Ong Ong Buns with unusual flavours of peanut and coconut and Shanghai-style taro with salted egg yolk. These were sold separately at £4.50-£5 which makes it nicer to customise a gift box or to treat yourself to a mooncake. There was an option to buy a larger gift box to house the mooncakes in, which I thought was slightly peculiar to charge an extra £3 for a nice looking box. I opted out and it came in individual cute little boxes instead. Again, I popped these in the oven for a good 2–3 minutes to warm them up. The Shanghai style was new to me, but somehow familiar. It’s very similar to some bakes I’d had in Hong Kong and bakes from family members in the past. The pastry was flakey, light laminate layers over the taro and the salted egg yolk filling. It did not disappoint and I’m glad I bought two.
Next up, peanut butter and coconut in Cantonese soft pastry casing. The desiccated coconut really sung through and reminded me of the cocktail buns from Chinese bakeries. However the peanut was a little subtle for me. The texture was slightly on the dry side and felt kinda samey. I wonder if it was mixed in with more peanut butter if it would make it more interesting.
Next in the mooncake journey, The Little Oven. I went for the Assorted Mid-Autumn box which came with 1 Sesame Chocolate Mooncake and 1 Matcha Red Bean Mooncake plus other baked goodies that came to £20. The box was simple but did the job and all the bakes looked very well presented. I heated these in the oven for a few minutes before diving in to try each one. Both crumbly delicious and was pleasantly surprised by both. I’ll start with Sesame chocolate Mooncake–the combination of the sesame and chocolate surprised me, whilst I was expecting a hit of overwhelming chocolate, it was rich but subtle enough for the sesame to come through without overpowering either flavours. The chocolate was subtly sweet which I very much appreciated and enjoyed every bite carefully whilst it lasted.
Leaving the matcha and red bean until last–not a conscious decision–but I’m glad I did. I absolutely love green tea, drink it all the time, but when it comes to matcha flavoured things they usually leave me disappointed. It’s hard to get the flavours right and usually leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. This, had the perfect balance of matcha without any overpowering bitterness. It was sweet from the red bean and the warmth and comforting flavours of matcha that I haven’t had before. I’m glad The Little Oven was part of the tasting session. It gave me hope that matcha flavoured bakes can be delicious and sesame and chocolate are a great combo.
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In summary, I find myself conflicted with modern vs traditional. Whilst I’m usually open to both, and can appreciate the traditional I’ve had all my life. This year, I am absolutely loving the new flavours and the movement of the mooncakes. Bring on more new takes of the traditional, but let’s not forget the traditional altogether. They have existed for as long as 3,000 years for a reason.
All photography by Nicole Tan
Get the mooncake guide print from Niconico shop here
