Mooncakes are out again!

Though it is only in the sixth lunar month, mooncake manufacturers have already begun selling mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Was around Tesco's to get some bills settled, and decided to walk into Tesco and see if I can get a few stuff. Lo and behold, the mooncake stalls for several companies were already set up and the sales promoters were busily pushing brochures of their products at the customers. Hmmm, this is like, it isn't yet the Hungry Ghost Festival month (7th lunar month), but the mooncake 'hungry ghosts' already can have their feast. My eyes were flitting amongst the product line, looking for a particular mooncake that I know someone at home would love to have. The salesperson from Baker's Cottage noticed that I was looking, and she quickly shoved her brochure onto my hands (mind you, her competitor from Six Happiness quickly jumped in and did the same). Then she started explaining the product line. An interesting one was a 'healthy & nutritious' choice of mooncake called Golden Bliss - delicate carrot butter skin, no sugar added to the lotus paste filling with roasted macadamia nuts, dried blackcurrents, cranberries, white sesame & sunflower seeds, and as replacement for the duck egg yolk, a pumpkin centre filling. Others were more sinful (and sounds more delicious) like Mint Hazelnut Truffle or Cheesy Choc-Oreo.

I was more interested in the charcoal powder mooncake, which I had once last year. Theirs is called Precious Black (黑龙珠) and the skin has charcoal powder, which gives it a jet-black colour.  The filling is a no sugar added white lotus paste with chunky dried longan and as substitute for the yolk, a wolfberry-lotus paste mix.

Precious Black - nice! Its been on their best sellers list for the past two years.

The skin has no taste in particular, and probably the suggestion of eating charcoal adds novelty to this mooncake. Think of it as eating carbon pills with your food. The thing with mooncakes is if you buy them early, you get nice gift boxes to go with them. So you can make a pretty presentable gift out of the mooncakes, or reuse the boxes for something else. These mooncakes came in a thick paper box with a magnetic latch. I know someone who actually collects mooncake boxes and tins, so perhaps after eating the mooncake, I can still make a gift out of the box. Now to get the jasmine tea out and have a slice of mooncake.

Mooncake box. Click here to see more of mooncake boxes in 2012.