Written by: Xinhua News Agency
Posted on: October 04, 2018 | 
| 中文
Moon cake
In China, there is a folk custom of eating mooncakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival, the 15th day of the eighth month in Chinese lunar calendar. Nowadays, mooncakes in different shapes, either sweet or salty, based on different dietary habits and preferences, have become a common food in the lives of people in various parts of China.
Guizhou “Zhaihao Sesame Cake” that People Eat Once a Year
The Sesame Cake is as big as a palm, and has a special aroma after being baked with charcoal fire. It is neither sweet nor greasy, but appetizing and crispy. The traditionally handmade Sesame Cake produced in Zhaihao Town, Rongjiang County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, has a history of more than 200 years. This kind of cake is made only during the Mid-Autumn Festival, so if one misses the chance, he will have to wait for another year.
Li Zunlin, 77, started to learn to make the Sesame Cake as an apprentice when he was 18. He opened his first Sesame Cake shop in Zhaihao Town in 1991. Led by him, there are now seven such shops in the small town. However, these shops only begin to sell Sesame Cakes one month before the Mid-Autumn Festival, and sell other cakes in ordinary days.
The ingredients for the special festival cake include peanuts, sesame, cinnamon, orange peel, ice sugar, sunflower seeds and glutinous rice. Most of the raw materials are produced locally in the town. It takes more than an hour for a cake to be cooked, beginning from making the dough, putting in fillings, modeling and placing in pans for baking on charcoal fire. The workshops usually cook the cakes in batches, and can make 40 cakes a batch. The whole process from material selection to preparation and cooking is the application of a traditional handicraft that has been inherited and passed down for more than 200 years, and charcoal baking is retained until today.
Fujian “Carp Cakes” as both Food and Toy
In Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China, there is a kind of traditional mooncake with local characteristics, called "Carp Cakes". The cakes are not made of carp, but of flour in carp shape or with carp patterns. They are divided into food-oriented ones and play-oriented ones, with the former valuing the taste of stuffing while the latter stressing more on shapes and colors, and can be used as necklaces by the children, according to local traditions.
Depending on individual preferences, the fillings, sizes and shapes of "Carp Cake" vary. For the Fuzhou natives, "Carp Cake" is the most traditional mooncake in their memory.
Savory Xinjiang Spicy Chicken Mooncake
Xinjiang mooncake has the food style typical in Northwest China, with strong flavors and fillings of selected ingredients. The famous Xinjiang delicacy of spicy chicken, or literally translated as “big plate chicken,” is made of chicken fried in hot vegetable oil, then stir-fried after adding pepper, anise, straw fruit, cinnamon and other spices, and finally coupled with soft waxy potatoes. That is the taste of hometown which Xinjiang natives outside the region miss the most during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
"Why not combine the Xinjiang delicacy with mooncakes, so that the Xinjiang natives in other places can also enjoy the food?" Liu Jiaxi and Zhang Yin, two gourmet chefs in Urumqi, Xinjiang, made a bold attempt to wrap the spicy chicken in mooncakes.
Boneless spicy chicken and some cooked dried hot pepper are mixed as the filling, put into mooncake wraps, and molded into mooncakes. Even Liu did not expect that the innovative mooncakes would become so popular.
Exquisite Hong Kong and Macao Style Handmade Mooncakes
In Hong Kong and Macao of China, handmade mooncakes are still the dominant products of the Mid-Autumn Festival market every year.
In Hong Kong, egg custard mooncakes have long been a favorite among local consumers. Master Zhou Xin, director of mooncakes at Yixin Gourmet Restaurant, has more than 40 years of experience in making mooncakes. He said the taste could not be replaced by machine-made mooncakes. It requires the mooncake masters not only to mix the stuffing according to certain proportions, but also to pay special attention to wrapping the stuffing.
"Mooncake wraps should be crispy but not dry and rough; the second layer of cream stuffing should be kept wet, with sand texture but not sticky; and the salty yolk at the center should be tasty enough, so that people may enjoy the different layers of taste," Zhou said that it is a test of the years of experience of mooncake masters.
Chen Dimian, who has been making mooncakes all year round, is also deeply aware of it. Chen is the owner of Pinfang Bakery on October Fifth Street in Macao. Every year when the Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, many consumers order hand-made mooncakes from his bakery, which needs to make more than 400 mooncakes a day. Though he is already nearly sixty, Chen still prepares the fillings every day, “Because this is the key to the taste of hand-made mooncakes."
Popular Taiwan “Mung Bean and Meat Pastry”
New tastes and styles of mooncakes are introduced to Taiwan market every year, but the traditional "guzao flavor", or “old taste” pastries are still the most popular. Among them, "Mung Bean and Meat Pastry" is the most famous.
As a traditional Mid-Autumn Festival gift, "Mung Bean and Meat Pastry" is known as a "Taiwan-style mooncake" with bean paste and stewed meat wrapped in the crust. Kaohsiung bakery "Jiu Zhen Nan" makes such pastries with round mung beans. After soaking, washing, filtering, steaming, pressing, boiling and frying, the beans are made into a crispy and soft paste with a savory scent, which is then wrapped in hand-rolled “thousand-layer” cake skins. The freshly baked pastries exude an appetizing smell. Its golden crispy skin melts immediately once put in the mouth, and its aroma is refreshing and elegant.
Translated by Xu Donglin
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