We saw this while walking around the mall one day. I didn’t realize Starbucks sells mooncakes and the barista told me they’ve been doing so for three (3) years – just not during Mid-Autumn Festival. I laughed at that and asked when they actually sold it, and it turned out to be the Lunar New Year (!!!). This is the first time they’ve sold mooncakes at the *right time* during Mid-Autumn Festival.
The mooncakes are RM 48++ per box or RM 288++ for 2 boxes in a gift set with a pair of Starbucks mugs. The gift set also has the Starbucks Exclusive D24 Durian Mooncake. My better half bought a box for my dad, which I brought back home to Sibu and I bought a box for my dear so she could try them.
These are not full-sized mooncakes – it’s mini mooncakes!
Here’s the Starbucks Mid-Autumn Mooncake Collection 2014:
Apricot Hazelnut Latte Mooncake
This is a very interesting mooncake – the skin is made of aromatic Starbucks VIA coffee! That’s their brand of ready to brew coffee which retails for RM 28 for 5 packs. I’ve had them before, you just need to add water and it’s an ingeniously stable way to add real coffee into the baked mooncake skin.
There’s also hazelnut lotus paste inside with bits of chunky apricot and the faux “egg yolk center” is made of cream cheese soft filling. I love the strong taste of coffee and was wondering where it came from before realizing it’s in the skin! It’s an exciting treat that adds indulgence in every bite – a real winner!
Chewy Nutty Cranberry Mooncake
This tastes eerily like the fruits with nuts and ham traditional mooncakes! It has a similar texture and if there was a blind taste taste, I might be hard pressed to differentiate the two, if not for the slight tang of cranberry and the absence of lard.
I think it’s meant to be this way – the mooncake is jammed with cranberries, orange peels/zest, a variety of nuts and melon kernel seeds with the savory twist of a salted egg center. It’s rich in taste and texture – a halal version of a classic.
Signature Banana Chocolate Mooncake
This is their signature mooncake of 2014 and it contains banana in lieu of the traditional salted egg center. It’s quite an interesting flagship offering – the pastry skin is made of chocolate and there’s bits of actual banana in the center.
It sounds very simple but the taste and texture works very well together – the creamy chocolate lotus filling, the baked chocolate pastry skin and the addition of real bananas are a treat!
Green Tea Azuki Mooncake
This tastes suspiciously (or refreshingly) like the Green Tea Latte drink in their outlets. That’s probably coz they used the same premium green tea in the lotus filling. There’s also the classic combination of red bean paste and white kernels in the filling, making it a perfect combination of Japanese inspired flair.
I really liked how the matcha is baked into the pastry skin. I’ve been quite annoyed at mooncakes that promises the moon (haha) but doesn’t deliver – mediocre tasteless baked skins with only the fillings as innovation. I’m glad Starbucks went the harder route – actually baking flavors into the mooncake pastry.
I thought the Starbucks Mid-Autumn Collection 2014 was quite interesting. It’s also very competitively priced (at least at first glance) but they’re actually miniature mooncakes instead of full-sized ones. We also got a couple of vouchers for Starbucks drinks included and each box came up to slightly over RM 50 after taxes and all.
I don’t know if it’s me or my Maths problem. I calculated three times (the calculator is in front of me now).. RM48 for one box (ok, fair enuff for 4 mini mooncakes), or RM288 for two boxes, plus free mugs. Two boxes will be RM48 x 2 = RM96. If it’s RM288, means the mug is (RM288 – RM96) / 2 = RM96 per mug?
That chewy nutty cranberry looks like “kam tui” indeed, like you said, the traditional ham & nuts mooncake.. My dad loves it.. I think of all the 4 mini mooncakes, I like the chocolate & banana the most.. I can finish the whole mooncake in 1 mouth! Teehee..
It’s not you! We were puzzled too! 🙂
It didn’t make sense at first, why RM 48++ for one box but it goes exponentially up to RM 288++ for a gift set of two boxes?
According to the barista, it’s coz the gift set has 2 x Starbucks Exclusive D24 Durian Mooncake in the other box (together with 2 x Apricot Hazelnut Latte Mooncake). The other box is the same as the RM 48++ one (e.g. one each of Signature Banana Chocolate Mooncake, Green Tea Azuki Mooncake, Apricot Hazelnut Latte Mooncake, Chewy Nutty Cranberry Mooncake).
Thus, the extra you’ll be paying for is for the 2 x limited edition mugs, the nice boxed set (it’s very large, about the size of a built-in rack oven but not as thick), and the glossy cardboard bag, plus a couple of extra free drinks vouchers which they bundled in.
We also got a couple of free drinks vouchers (1 per box) but the RM 288++ gift box would have more, so it doesn’t make sense to get that, unless you want a lot of free (bundled) drink vouchers at Starbucks. I’ll rather go to the smaller artisanal coffee places with single origin coffee beans.
Yeah, the Chewy Nutty Cranberry Mooncake is really interesting! It tastes like the traditional one with fruits and nuts and ham, but this one has cranberry instead, and no lard or ham. I also quite liked the Signature Banana Chocolate Mooncake – it has real bananas inside!
Yes , they have been selling for very long. However I find that it’s too expensive and rather settled for those household names.
I was puzzled coz I’ve never seen them sell it before! 🙂
The barista told me that they did sell it for the past two years, just not during Mid-Autumn Festival, which I found was rather strange. I’m not sure if he wasn’t sure himself but it made me laugh. Haha.
Yeah, it is a bit expensive since there’s tax on top of that and it’s not a regular sized mooncake (slightly less than 1/2 the size of a normal mooncake) but we’ve never tried it before so decided to have a taste. Some of them are quite good.
Skin is a bit thick compared to many of the others but I like that! I love the traditional pastry!!!
Yeah, there are 2 mooncakes which has a thicker skin! 🙂
The mooncakes which has real coffee powder baked into the skin is thicker – Apricot Hazelnut Latte Mooncake has their Starbucks VIA coffee baked into the skin, so it needs to be thick to impart the latte flavor. I thought it was quite nice, the coffee flavor won’t be as strong if it was thinner.
Their mooncake skins are flavored, which I thought was a nice touch – a lot of other manufacturers claim to have flavored skins but you can’t really taste them. You can *really* taste the coffee and green tea and you can recognize it as their house blend in these mooncakes, which is what makes them special.
Yea, over-priced but good to try for novelty sake. My parents like the traditional flavors, i can’t go for those funky flavors unfortunately 🙁
Yeah, I love to try new and fun mooncake flavors too! 🙂
Had a great Godiva chocolate mooncake last year and speaking off novelty mooncakes, I was looking for a Nyonya sambal mooncake that I had in 2005. I was searching and searching and couldn’t find it, which was very puzzling…
…until I realized that my archives from July-September 2005 are missing (!!!) from this blog.
I’m sure it’s a HTML error or something, my old posts still had Movable Type code and maybe the conversion didn’t go well. Good thing you were talking about novelty mooncakes though or else I wouldn’t have realized. Cheers!
I still have the Nyonya sambal mooncake post on a mirror site though:
http://castitas.com/?p=366
Thanks to you, I now know I’m missing three months and can back it up from my other mirror site. Haha!
Hmm…yeah, I get what you mean, I do like the traditional flavors too and my dad likes the old school ones as well (especially the fruits, nuts and ham mooncake). He did try these Starbucks mooncakes though coz my dear bought it for him and he quite liked it.
BTW, the Chewy Nutty Cranberry Mooncake really does taste like the old school type mooncake so maybe you can check that out with your parents next year. Cheers!
HB, wonder if Starbuck would do online on the moon cakes? Since San Francisco do have lot of Starbuck shops but none sell moon cakes .
Hello Vickie! 🙂
Hmm…I don’t think they sell the mooncakes online. It might also be an Asian thing e.g. the mooncakes are meant for the Asian market and not in continental US.
I don’t think it’s available for purchase online but maybe it can be mailed over to the US (depending on your quarantine laws – products with egg inside usually can’t get through, I know it can’t get into Australia). Cheers!
I’m a bit old school when it comes to mooncakes. I’d still prefer a traditional one though the green tea azuki looks good.
Yeah, I get what you mean! 🙂
I like the traditional ones too, although I must admit, I eagerly look for the new mooncakes each there. There’s a lot of new ones every year – mochi style is getting popular but it requires refrigeration and there’s also ice cream mooncakes now.
am not really keen on mooncakes but really keen on mooncakes boxes. Can use to store many things.
at that price, it’s really cheap. I didn’t know. Or else can consider getting a box too. Maybe next year….ahem…”if” I remember…
I mean the RM48 ones…not the RM288.
I think for hardcore Starbucks fans, they won’t mind to fork out that amount of money for the cups
Yeah, but it’s actually only 1/2 the size of normal mooncakes! 🙂
These are just 90 grams while Tai Thong mooncakes (for comparison) are 185 grams. So it’s technically less than 1/2 the size for the same amount of money. Haha.
Still a good deal since some of them tastes really good though.
Oh, there are some wonderful ones this year! 🙂
I saw one that is like a tiffin carrier but it actually swivels out and it’s made of cloth and apparently you can put a light bulb inside when you’re finished with the mooncakes (one each tier) and it works as a lamp too!
I didn’t see that in real life though or I would have INSTANTLY bought it. It was in a catalog I saw at the dentist – from a KL restaurant.
That’s rare… I mean they are a ‘must have’ mooncake during the festival. Especially for Starbuck fans.
Yeah, I like their mooncakes too! 🙂
My favorite would have to be the Signature Banana Chocolate Mooncake – it has real bananas inside. They expire quite fast though, like all mooncakes nowadays which uses less preservatives and fresh fruits inside.