mooncakes =D

The Chinese Mid-Autumn festival is here again. It was also known affectionately as mooncake festival due to the fact that mooncakes only make their special appearance for this particular season. Mooncakes has evolved greatly in modern times with more distinctive flavours apart from the traditional lotus or red bean paste and mixed nuts with ham. Now mooncakes often comes with different flavours such as pandan lotus (pioneered by Oversea), yam, walnut, jingsa, green tea, coconut, mint, chocolate and even DURIAN!

For this year celebration, I am lucky enough to have mooncakes from Ipoh. Baked in a more traditional kitchen, one can’t complain about the amount of oil used in it. I bought four pieces of mooncakes from Ching Han Guan (钟汉元) while I am on my way back from my Penang-Kulim trip two weeks ago.

-Picture taken from wikistreetfood.com-

I bought four pieces from the uncle and 2 of them was the owner’s recommendation, which is the Mixed Nuts with Ham Bits mooncake (apparently Ching Han Guan is very proud of their Mixed Nuts mooncakes) and Meat Floss (Rou Xi) mooncake. The uncle’s recommendation is indeed a good one, the mixed nuts with ham bits definitely lives up to his fame. When you bite in the soft nut feeling (yes, it is soft because the various nuts are compressed by hand using molasses as bond instead of machines), there’s a sudden burst of “golden” taste lingers around the mouth. Fantastic. I had never enjoyed mixed nuts mooncakes but this one certainly makes me craves for MORE!

Mixed Nuts with ham bits

The lotus paste single yolk was opened to serve my aunties that came over for a visit. Both cant stop praising the and a bite instantly reminds them of the mooncakes they used to have during the 70’s and 80’s- laden with lard, oily but has a very nice fragrant and tasted smooth.

Lotus paste single yolk

My personal favourite, the pandan lotus or also known as “Golden Emerald” because of its semi translucent green coloured filling which resembles the emerald gemstone.

Golden Emerald

This certainly sounds weird. Till now, it is still in its packaging so I couldn’t comment much on this weird mooncake yet. However, my expectation to this is almost as high as the mixed nuts with ham mooncake.

Meat Floss (Rou Xi)

So how is your mooncakes? I’ll be glad to hear about your mooncake story too.