Mooncakes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mooncakes (月饼 yuèbǐng/ ywair-bing) are Chinese pastries with highly-varied fillings, generally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. This year it falls on September 27th (the date not just of a full moon but also, in much of the world, a lunar eclipse).

 

In Malaysia, these cakes are normally stuffed with fillings, often based on lotus seeds, nuts or sweet bean-paste, and with or without egg yolk. But there are also other types of fillings and they include chocolate, coffee, durian, green tea, pandan and yam. 

In China, I read that organic and vegan mooncakes are also having a moment. 

 

 

My favorite: Frosty Durian Musang King mooncake, RM32 for 2 pieces @ Dragon-I Restaurant, Sunway Pyramid

 

If I may add, these innovations are superb too. 

As Fuchsia Dunlop, a British authority on Chinese food, notes that “cuisines are living cultural artefacts… they are a response to where we are now”.

 

Chinese cuisine – including mooncakes – is no longer confined in the Sinosphere. Like everything and anything else that is Chinese – they are reaching out to the world. It's a globalised world, after all.

Who would have thought that mooncakes were once used in the Ming dynasty to hide secret messages for the Han Chinese revolt?