Everything you wanted to know about mooncakes
September 26, 2001 | 12:00am
What fruitcakes are to Christ-mas, mooncakes are to the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. Traditionally, these seasonal round-shaped cakes have a sweet filling of lotus seed paste or red bean paste and often have one or more salted duck eggs in the center to represent the moon.
And the moon is what this celebration is all about. The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month. It is the time of the year when the moon is said to be at its brightest and fullest. This year, the festival falls on Oct. 1.
Far from being just another item on the menu of a Chinese restaurant, the mooncake makes its claim to Chinese history when it aided rebels in overthrowing a foreign dynasty.
It is said that during the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368), invading Mongolians oppressed and mistreated the Chinese people, so much so that Zhu Yuanzhang and his followers finally rose in revolt. The revolutionaries spread word of their plan by inserting written messages that incited revolt into mooncakes and by distributing them among the people. The message asked the citizens to rise up in revolt against their Mongol rulers on the night of the Mid-Autumn festival. Since the Mongolians never partook of these pastries or celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, the plan escaped detection. The attack was successful and the Ming dynasty was later established.
Nowadays, you won’t find any hidden messages inside mooncakes. These have probably moved on and become fortune cookies in North America.
But what is the real story behind the mooncake? How did it come about?
According to legend, a long time ago there were two brothers, who could not get along with each other, so they decided to part ways. One went to live in the north, the other in the south. Their absence made their mother very lonely. She asked her husband to send word to the two brothers to come home for a reunion.
One day after the autumn harvest, the elder brother came from the north bringing along flour. The younger brother came from the south with brown sugar. To please both sons, she prepared a cake from the northern flour and stuffed it with the brown sugar from the south.
As the moon was bright, the father decided to bring out the table out into the garden where the family shared the meal under the full moon. The mother noted that the round cake she prepared signified the oneness of the family, also symbolized by the full moon. She named what she baked yuebing or mooncake.
The father wished that his two sons reconcile. If they could not live together under one roof, surely they would make it a point to come back home even once a year when the harvest is over. In her happiness, the mother made sure that come next autumn, she would gather fresh fruits to serve the family. Like her mooncakes, she chose round fruits like pomelos, apples, orange and dates. Neighbors noticed the annual family gathering held under the bright moon after the autumn harvest and decided to do the same.
Making mooncakes the traditional way is a tedious and noisy affair. First, the sugar has to be boiled until it becomes a syrupy mixture. It is then mixed with lye water and flour till it forms a dough.
For the lotus paste filling, the lotus seeds are soaked first in lye water and then in boiling water, which makes it easier for bakers to remove the skin covering the seeds. After the skins are removed, the seeds are then boiled again till they are soft. When they are soft enough, the seeds are blended till they become a thick paste. The paste is then cooked in a heated wok with a mixture of oil and sugar. It is stirred constantly until it develops into a thick consistency and left overnight.
The dough is then rolled out and divided into smaller pieces, and then flattened. The lotus seed paste is placed in the middle of the dough, along with a salted egg yolk. The edges are then sealed tightly. Wooden molds are lightly floured and the dough ball is pressed into it. The baker would then knock the mold against the table to dislodge the mooncake. It is then baked in a preheated oven for 180º Celsius for 20 to 25 minutes. It is left to cool and then brushed with a beaten egg and baked again for another 10 minutes or until golden brown.
Whew! Good thing nowadays the process of making mooncakes is largely automated. This helps meet the huge demands during the Mid-Autumn Festival, as well as maintain high quality standard among manufacturers.
If you go to a Chinese baker or a restaurant in Manila’s Chinatown, you would be confronted with a dozen variety and sizes of mooncakes on sale, from those with lotus paste and a single egg to those filled with ube filling. But despite the variety available in Manila, it is only a small sample of what is available in China and in other overseas Chinese communities.
Some of the lesser known mainland Chinese varieties not available in Manila include the Shanghainese mooncake, which has a thick crust and is made without molds, and the Teochew mooncakes, which have a thrice-fried flaky crust, a yam paste filling and a salted egg yolk.
Another variety not often seen in Manila is the ping pei or snow-skin or unbaked mooncakes. The soft skin is made from cooked glutinous rice flour, icing sugar, oil and cold water. Flavorings, such as yam, orange, banana, pandan and strawberry, are added for variety.
Other interesting mooncake varieties include those from Malaysia and Singapore that have been flavored with pandan leaves, which give the lotus paste fillings a green tint. Because of this, they are known as jade mooncakes. Also popular in Malaysia and Singapore are mooncakes filled with durian. For big spenders, some bakeries in Hong Kong and Singapore even offer mooncakes sprinkled with real gold flakes!
Even how mooncakes look is changing. Traditionally, they are stamped into molds bearing Chinese characters indicating the name of the bakery and the type of filling used. But some bakeries in Hong Kong will now stamp them with your family name, so that you can give personalized ones to friends and family.
Other bakeries have started to offer mooncakes that have broken the round mold, so to speak. They now offer mooncakes that come in oval, triangle, and even star shapes! (Here is a rhetorical question. If a mooncake is star-shaped, should it still be called a mooncake?)
Still other bakeries have taken it a step further and produced mooncakes bearing the likenesses of popular cartoon characters. If you take a look at a Hong Kong food magazine, you will see ads for mooncakes bearing the faces of Hello Kitty, Garfield and Winnie the Pooh.
Mooncakes have not been spared in this age of fusion cuisine, when people would combine eastern and western ingredients and cooking methods. Ice cream company Häagen-Dazs, for example, has released in some markets ice cream mooncakes. These cakes are made of ice cream, have a nugget of mango sorbet in the center and are wrapped in a thick layer of Belgian chocolate. Meanwhile in Singapore, an exclusive (read: expensive) restaurant has began offering in its dessert menu a mini snow-skin mooncake with a champagne truffle and chocolate filling. They also have another version that is stuffed with cream cheese and raisins. Westerners, who often turn their noses up at traditional mooncakes, will probably prefer these varieties.
Even the way mooncakes are packaged is not spared from these radical changes. Before, mooncakes were sold in rolls wrapped in waxed paper. Later, they were sold in simple red square cardboard boxes tied with strings. But with stiffer competition, competitors tried to outdo each other in coming out with the fanciest packaging. Most of the mooncake containers in Manila come either in clear plastic containers or in square boxes with traditional prints of Chinese beauties and peonies.
However in other Asian countries, the containers themselves are good enough to become collector’s items. Some of them have broken away from the standard square tin boxes and have opted for round, heart-shaped or even butterfly-shaped boxes. Some even look like fiambreras or tiered tiffin tin lunch boxes.
Even cardboard packaging is undergoing a revolution. One bakery in Singapore offers a two-tiered cardboard box printed with a regal red, blue and orange dragon against a yellow background, which is a design that could only be used by the Chinese emperor during the Ching or Manchu dynasties. It even has a cover that is held together by a metal clasp.
But what good would all this talk about mooncakes be if you don’t go out and actually taste it yourself?
Here are pointers in helping you find a good mooncake, whether it is from a small bakery in Ongpin or a hotel in Makati.
• The skin should be moist and tender.
• The filling must be very smooth, unless it is filled with green bean paste, which tends to go grainy. The filling must not be too dry and should not have a rancid taste, which is often caused by using poor quality lotus seeds.
• The yolk should be a bright orange. If the yolk is yellow, it is likely to be hard and dry.
Mooncakes are not for the health-conscious as they are loaded with calories. The best way to wash down one of these sticky cakes is with a cup of Chinese tea, especially jasmine or chrysanthemum tea, which aids the digestion.
Likewise, do not devour a mooncake whole, as you would with a slice of pastry or a cookie. Etiquette requires that you cut a mooncake into four equal sections, then eat it one by one.
A final note about mooncakes: Regardless of your choice of mooncake, whether it is the traditional single yolk with lotus paste or snow-skin mooncake imprinted with the face of Hello Kitty, the joy of eating a mooncake is simply not complete without having the people you love and care for with you, sharing with them a slice of mooncake, and maybe a joke or two. After all, togetherness is what the Mid-Autumn Festival is really all about.
(Anson Yu assures that no mooncakes were harmed in the course of researching this article, though he did mention that he has seen enough mooncakes to last him five lifetimes.)
And the moon is what this celebration is all about. The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month. It is the time of the year when the moon is said to be at its brightest and fullest. This year, the festival falls on Oct. 1.
Far from being just another item on the menu of a Chinese restaurant, the mooncake makes its claim to Chinese history when it aided rebels in overthrowing a foreign dynasty.
It is said that during the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368), invading Mongolians oppressed and mistreated the Chinese people, so much so that Zhu Yuanzhang and his followers finally rose in revolt. The revolutionaries spread word of their plan by inserting written messages that incited revolt into mooncakes and by distributing them among the people. The message asked the citizens to rise up in revolt against their Mongol rulers on the night of the Mid-Autumn festival. Since the Mongolians never partook of these pastries or celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, the plan escaped detection. The attack was successful and the Ming dynasty was later established.
Nowadays, you won’t find any hidden messages inside mooncakes. These have probably moved on and become fortune cookies in North America.
But what is the real story behind the mooncake? How did it come about?
According to legend, a long time ago there were two brothers, who could not get along with each other, so they decided to part ways. One went to live in the north, the other in the south. Their absence made their mother very lonely. She asked her husband to send word to the two brothers to come home for a reunion.
One day after the autumn harvest, the elder brother came from the north bringing along flour. The younger brother came from the south with brown sugar. To please both sons, she prepared a cake from the northern flour and stuffed it with the brown sugar from the south.
As the moon was bright, the father decided to bring out the table out into the garden where the family shared the meal under the full moon. The mother noted that the round cake she prepared signified the oneness of the family, also symbolized by the full moon. She named what she baked yuebing or mooncake.
The father wished that his two sons reconcile. If they could not live together under one roof, surely they would make it a point to come back home even once a year when the harvest is over. In her happiness, the mother made sure that come next autumn, she would gather fresh fruits to serve the family. Like her mooncakes, she chose round fruits like pomelos, apples, orange and dates. Neighbors noticed the annual family gathering held under the bright moon after the autumn harvest and decided to do the same.
For the lotus paste filling, the lotus seeds are soaked first in lye water and then in boiling water, which makes it easier for bakers to remove the skin covering the seeds. After the skins are removed, the seeds are then boiled again till they are soft. When they are soft enough, the seeds are blended till they become a thick paste. The paste is then cooked in a heated wok with a mixture of oil and sugar. It is stirred constantly until it develops into a thick consistency and left overnight.
The dough is then rolled out and divided into smaller pieces, and then flattened. The lotus seed paste is placed in the middle of the dough, along with a salted egg yolk. The edges are then sealed tightly. Wooden molds are lightly floured and the dough ball is pressed into it. The baker would then knock the mold against the table to dislodge the mooncake. It is then baked in a preheated oven for 180º Celsius for 20 to 25 minutes. It is left to cool and then brushed with a beaten egg and baked again for another 10 minutes or until golden brown.
Whew! Good thing nowadays the process of making mooncakes is largely automated. This helps meet the huge demands during the Mid-Autumn Festival, as well as maintain high quality standard among manufacturers.
If you go to a Chinese baker or a restaurant in Manila’s Chinatown, you would be confronted with a dozen variety and sizes of mooncakes on sale, from those with lotus paste and a single egg to those filled with ube filling. But despite the variety available in Manila, it is only a small sample of what is available in China and in other overseas Chinese communities.
Some of the lesser known mainland Chinese varieties not available in Manila include the Shanghainese mooncake, which has a thick crust and is made without molds, and the Teochew mooncakes, which have a thrice-fried flaky crust, a yam paste filling and a salted egg yolk.
Another variety not often seen in Manila is the ping pei or snow-skin or unbaked mooncakes. The soft skin is made from cooked glutinous rice flour, icing sugar, oil and cold water. Flavorings, such as yam, orange, banana, pandan and strawberry, are added for variety.
Other interesting mooncake varieties include those from Malaysia and Singapore that have been flavored with pandan leaves, which give the lotus paste fillings a green tint. Because of this, they are known as jade mooncakes. Also popular in Malaysia and Singapore are mooncakes filled with durian. For big spenders, some bakeries in Hong Kong and Singapore even offer mooncakes sprinkled with real gold flakes!
Even how mooncakes look is changing. Traditionally, they are stamped into molds bearing Chinese characters indicating the name of the bakery and the type of filling used. But some bakeries in Hong Kong will now stamp them with your family name, so that you can give personalized ones to friends and family.
Other bakeries have started to offer mooncakes that have broken the round mold, so to speak. They now offer mooncakes that come in oval, triangle, and even star shapes! (Here is a rhetorical question. If a mooncake is star-shaped, should it still be called a mooncake?)
Still other bakeries have taken it a step further and produced mooncakes bearing the likenesses of popular cartoon characters. If you take a look at a Hong Kong food magazine, you will see ads for mooncakes bearing the faces of Hello Kitty, Garfield and Winnie the Pooh.
Mooncakes have not been spared in this age of fusion cuisine, when people would combine eastern and western ingredients and cooking methods. Ice cream company Häagen-Dazs, for example, has released in some markets ice cream mooncakes. These cakes are made of ice cream, have a nugget of mango sorbet in the center and are wrapped in a thick layer of Belgian chocolate. Meanwhile in Singapore, an exclusive (read: expensive) restaurant has began offering in its dessert menu a mini snow-skin mooncake with a champagne truffle and chocolate filling. They also have another version that is stuffed with cream cheese and raisins. Westerners, who often turn their noses up at traditional mooncakes, will probably prefer these varieties.
Even the way mooncakes are packaged is not spared from these radical changes. Before, mooncakes were sold in rolls wrapped in waxed paper. Later, they were sold in simple red square cardboard boxes tied with strings. But with stiffer competition, competitors tried to outdo each other in coming out with the fanciest packaging. Most of the mooncake containers in Manila come either in clear plastic containers or in square boxes with traditional prints of Chinese beauties and peonies.
However in other Asian countries, the containers themselves are good enough to become collector’s items. Some of them have broken away from the standard square tin boxes and have opted for round, heart-shaped or even butterfly-shaped boxes. Some even look like fiambreras or tiered tiffin tin lunch boxes.
Even cardboard packaging is undergoing a revolution. One bakery in Singapore offers a two-tiered cardboard box printed with a regal red, blue and orange dragon against a yellow background, which is a design that could only be used by the Chinese emperor during the Ching or Manchu dynasties. It even has a cover that is held together by a metal clasp.
But what good would all this talk about mooncakes be if you don’t go out and actually taste it yourself?
Here are pointers in helping you find a good mooncake, whether it is from a small bakery in Ongpin or a hotel in Makati.
• The skin should be moist and tender.
• The filling must be very smooth, unless it is filled with green bean paste, which tends to go grainy. The filling must not be too dry and should not have a rancid taste, which is often caused by using poor quality lotus seeds.
• The yolk should be a bright orange. If the yolk is yellow, it is likely to be hard and dry.
Mooncakes are not for the health-conscious as they are loaded with calories. The best way to wash down one of these sticky cakes is with a cup of Chinese tea, especially jasmine or chrysanthemum tea, which aids the digestion.
Likewise, do not devour a mooncake whole, as you would with a slice of pastry or a cookie. Etiquette requires that you cut a mooncake into four equal sections, then eat it one by one.
A final note about mooncakes: Regardless of your choice of mooncake, whether it is the traditional single yolk with lotus paste or snow-skin mooncake imprinted with the face of Hello Kitty, the joy of eating a mooncake is simply not complete without having the people you love and care for with you, sharing with them a slice of mooncake, and maybe a joke or two. After all, togetherness is what the Mid-Autumn Festival is really all about.
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