Sep 19, 2009

mooncakes anyone?

one night i was discussing food with a colleague and he reminded me of mooncakes. the mid-autumn or mooncake festival is on october 3 and now the restos and other food establishments have started selling mooncakes.

since there's a vast majority of chinese people in malaysia, mooncakes are a big thing...even haagen dazs and starbucks have joined in the band wagon. luckily, there's a mooncake fair at the midvalley megamall.

mooncakes are baked pastries stuffed with lotus seed paste and salted eggyolk. looks like those baked hopias but only bigger and the texture is similar to the hopia too but eggy of course. anyway, i cannot remember if i've actually eaten one. the booths at midvalley offer samples and when i tasted one of the traditional ones, i opted to get the fancy ones. i'd have to say this is quite an indulgence...you'll see why later on.

read some posts on mooncakes so i got an idea on what i wanted to get. i want the modern snow skin mooncakes. these are not baked and have a shorter shelf life...i'd describe snow skin similar to the ready to eat tikoy of eng bee tin. soft...chewy and made of sticky rice.

hotels have come up with the fanciest ones and here's what i got.

wrapped in an oppulent box, shang palace of shangri-la hotel came up with a chocolate truffle with macadamia and caramel crunch (RM24).






everything is chocolate from the snowskin to the filling. what i liked about this is that, it's not sweet and chocolatey at all but the essence of chocolate is there, the macadamia nuts and the hints of caramel. it was like eating chocolate cake...pure chocolate but doesn't have that overpowering sweetness or chocolatey goodness. however, for roughly PHP325 a pop, i'd think you'd have second thoughts getting this. i could not fathom the fact that i bought this. but curiosity got the best of me and i'm pretty sure this is the first and last time i'm gonna buy this mooncake.

the next one is chynna's golden treasure (hilton).



another snowskin mooncake, dusted with gold... looks really well crafted though it only comes in a plastic square box. the snowskin is not infused with anything so in the inside it's white, call it original flavored snowskin but stuffed with tiramisu and kahlua paste. oh what a treat i tell you! i was so amazed when i tasted it. it tasted like mocha which i love, everyone who tried it loved this mooncake...even the guys! and at only RM14 a piece, this for me is a sure winner. yeah i know, at almost PHP200 you'd still have second thoughts on whether you should buy this, but i think it's worth it.

i also got a green tea with brown sugar mooncake but this one is baked one...leaning towards the traditional one...it's quite cheaper though at RM8/PHP100 but it's just too far from the other two that i decided to not post it anymore. anyway, i have failed to find a snowskin green tea mooncake which i reckon would be delish. i guess that's it, i got excited about these ones that i opted to post them right away...and yes i have too much backlog i really should start writing more stuff soon.

No comments:

Post a Comment