Taro Moon Cake and Jujube Walnut Mini Moon Cake
Some of you who shop at Asian markets may have noticed stacks of colorful boxes near the entrances in recent weeks. Those boxes are filled with Chinese mooncakes to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival (a.k.a. Moon Festival) which falls on October 3rd this year.
The festival is basically about worshipping the moon, and involves a Chinese legend with Chang E, the moon goddess. Read more about both here, because typing lots of words right now and trying to form coherent sentences while I’m nursing my first cup of green tea is too much for me. That, and I’m lazy.
I don’t know if they’re new this year or I only paid attention to them because of this site, but there are lots of mooncakes available in different flavors than the traditional one made with lotus seed paste (my favorite).
This box contained Taro Moon Cake and Jujube Walnut Mini Moon Cake.
It also included a plastic knife. God, I love it when food is convenient to eat.
I liked how the taro one resembled a lavender rose.
Unfortunately, its looks was the best thing about it. The taro moon cake wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either. Flaky layers surrounded a dry, chalky filling.
So I didn’t care for the filling’s texture, but I did like the overall sweetness of the mooncake and its light taro flavor.
The Jujube Walnut Mini Moon Cake looked like a typical one.
I was told by the supermarket cashier that the first (top) character is jujube and the second one is walnut.
Besides ingredient imprints, there are other fancy ones on top, too.
The red bean filling had a paste-like texture.
Same flavored mooncake, only cut in half so you can now see the walnuts. This mooncake’s flavor was interesting. It had an overall sweetness from the red beans, distinctive flavor of jujubes, and dull crunch of walnuts. I would have liked this one a lot better if it had only a red bean filling.
But I’m glad I tried this box of mooncakes and I’ll continue to try new flavors. I’ll keep coming back to the lotus seed one, though.
* For those of you who really like eating mooncakes, remaining stock is often discounted right after the Mid-Autumn Festival has ended. I’ve seen mooncakes regularly priced at $10-$40 a box (from places including Taiwan, like the one in this post, and China, Canada, and the United States), so it may be worth a store visit to check out the leftover mooncake selection.
I like the plain ones that only have the sweet paste. The nuts and eggs make the cakes taste weird. The more expensive ones even have shark fin on the top. That is just yucky!
I like the lotus flavor best. It’s the light sweetness that is most delicious to me. I think the worst one I’ve had is date-flavored. Blegh. I also hate the egg yolks. They tend to be greasy, dry, dense, salty…all these negative adjectives. The glaze on top of mooncakes always look so gorgeous though.
Grace: Oh yes, I’ve had shark fin mooncakes before, too. And I didn’t care for them at all. Come to think of it, I’m not that crazy about the taste of shark fin soup, either.
Lian: YES to the lotus flavor. Hmm, I’m not sure if I’ve tried date-flavored mooncakes. Anyway, I think my least favorite mooncake that makes me go “Bleh!” is the mixed-nuts one; not even the lotus seed paste can make it taste good.