mid autumn festival

Mid-Autumn 2015 Mooncake Roundup (Taiwan Special): Pork Floss Mooncakes, Walnut & Medjool Dates Mooncakes, Haagen-Dazs Handcrafted Ice Cream Mooncakes

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Walnut Date Mooncake

The majority of mooncakes here are from Taiwan. I was there before the Mid-Autumn Festival and bought all my mooncakes from I-Mei’s flagship shop in the middle of Taipei.

Mooncakes 2015

They’re mostly Taiwanese style mooncakes with flaky pastry shell but there are some of the classic mooncakes too, however all of them are made in Taiwan unless stated otherwise.

I Mei Taiwan

I had actually planned to get all the mooncakes from Taiwan. I thought it’ll be nice to give out mooncakes from Taiwan – it seemed like the ultimate souvenir, although I did buy other gifts too. It was a very busy trip and I couldn’t find time to get out, until my very last day, when Diana took me out at 10 am in the morning to a shop that sells mooncakes.

Diana

You can get mooncakes at 7-Eleven and the airport but for the former, you have to order in advance and the latter are commercialized stuff and I’ll rather go for a local producer and this place fit the bill perfectly!

Packing Mooncakes

The friendly people there even helped me pack everything and explained what each mooncake was (granted, I spent quite a lot) so that was good, considering I don’t read Chinese.

Pork Floss with Mung Bean Taiwanese Mooncakes (NTD 630)

Taiwanese Savory Mooncake

This is really good! I would give this Best of 2015 due to its unusual savory-sweet mix. I love how the pork floss interacts with the sweet mung bean paste and I really enjoyed eating this gem. I had specifically gone looking for a savory mooncake after hearing about it from Diana (our Taiwanese liaison).

Pork Floss Taiwanese Mooncakes

I was slightly taken aback when she asked me if I was looking for sweet or savory mooncakes. “Savory mooncakes? Whatever do you mean?” I asked. It turns out that pork floss mooncakes have been around for a while and the award winning combination with mung bean and the Taiwanese pastry skin is quite common here.

Pork Floss Mooncakes

This box cost NTD 630 (about RM 85).

I-Mei Specialty Mooncake Selection 2015 with Premium Gift Box (NTD 750)

Taipei Mooncakes

I got this one for my better half. It has a nice painting on the front of the box showing the exact street where I bought this mooncake from in the early days. I-Mei has been around since 1934 and they came out with a commemoration box where they commissioned someone to paint the street scene of their flagship store in Taipei where I went to.

Imei Mooncakes

This has a mixture of Taiwanese style mooncakes, Hong Kong style mooncakes and a selection of Taiwanese pastries (pineapple cake etc). It also has a wonderful Taiwanese mooncake flavor – dates and walnuts! It also appears in the previous box above (I think) as well as the one below (in the Hong Kong skin) and it’s a wonderful flavor!

I Mei Hong Kong Style Mooncakes (NTD 900)

Hong Kong Mooncakes

This is the most expensive selection in their shop and I got in for my dear’s parents. It’s all Hong Kong style baked skin mooncakes but they’re all made in Taiwan. There’s a HUGE mooncake (200 grams) in the middle which has a pineapple filling as a tribute to its Taiwanese heritage but the others come in a variety of flavors including chocolate, walnut and Medjool dates.

Pineapple Mooncakes

I got to taste the pineapple filling and it was really good.

Pineapple Mooncake

I thought the walnut and date filling is really awesome too (but no one else did). In fact, I’ll say the single yolk date filling Taiwanese mooncake is my second favorite this year.

Medjool Dates Mooncake

I also choose a very interesting pack which had dried scallops and XO in a mooncake but for some reason it wasn’t packed and I wasn’t charged for it. I suspect this happened when we switched from a longer box to a flatter one and before it was tabulated and sealed so I didn’t realize it. Oh well.

Teochew Pure Green Bean Mooncake (RM 9.50)

Teochew Mooncake

This lard filled mooncake is from Setapak Teochew Restaurant. It’s been around since 1912 and they’re using their time-tested recipe. It’s a lot of lard (can smell it as soon as you open it) and decidedly (and proudly?) non-halal and there’s a certain charm to old school mooncakes like this, much like the Foochow mooncakes.

Teochew Lard Mooncake

It’s quite good, although the lard smell/taste is a bit overwhelming and the filling is a little too sweet for today’s standards.

Haagen-Dazs Handcrafted Ice Cream Mooncakes (RM 95)

Haagen-Dazs Mooncakes 2015

My better half got this for me. She knows I love mooncakes (especially unusual ones) and thus brought this home one day. It’s the Petite Collection which contains 5 hand-crafted ice cream mooncakes. Each set has:

  • White Chocolate Mooncake with Mango Ice Cream
  • Strawberry Chocolate Mooncake with Summer Berries & Cream Ice Cream
  • Milk Chocolate Mooncake with Chocolate Ice Cream

Handcrafted Ice Cream Mooncakes

The first one is the best and the “rarest” e.g. each mooncake configuration will have 1:2:2 ratio with the White Chocolate with Mango Ice Cream being the smallest number. Their Deluxe Collection also has the same kind of ice cream mooncakes, but with 2:3:3 respectively.

Haagen-Dazs Mooncakes

The Strawberry Chocolate Mooncake with Summer Berries & Cream Ice Cream is very refreshing too but my dear liked the Milk Chocolate Mooncake with Chocolate Ice Cream, which tasted like the Mother’s Day ice cream cake from Haagen-Dazs I got earlier this year. This is also the same mooncake we featured in TumblingMinis. πŸ˜€

Taiwan Mooncakes

Like I said, most of the mooncakes this year were purchased during my trip to Taiwan and are made in Taiwan. We both thought that the Taiwanese style pastry mooncakes were much better than their attempts to make a baked skin mooncake. I loved the pork floss with mung bean mooncake and the walnut and date mooncakes came in a close second.

Our Mid-Autumn Festival 2015

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Mid-Autumn Festival

I was out with the kids last week when we saw a shop selling lanterns for Mid-Autumn Festival. These are the newer cellophane type lanterns instead of the paper ones we had as kids.

Mid-Autumn Lanterns

I remember the bigger one got a similar type during Mid-Autumn two years ago – it was a dragon and she wanted the *same* one for this year. Haha.

Godzilla Lantern

We all chose one and in the end she went for a dinosaur (looks like a baby T-Rex with wings – Godzilla?)…

Goldfish Lantern

…while her younger sister went for a goldfish.

Rooster Lantern

I made my better half choose a rooster coz I thought it represented our Zodiac, but I was wrong, we share the same star sign in Western astrology, but different ones in the Chinese η”Ÿθ‚–.

Elephant Lantern

I got myself a jumbo elephant for no particular reason.

Mid-Autumn Lantern

We played outside the house and the kids were so afraid of burning down the lanterns (coz a similar thing happened in 2013) that they ended up playing with the candles instead. πŸ™‚

Playing with Candles

It was a lot of fun though and we also had a whole bunch of mooncakes. I’ll get on it, the annual mooncake roundup is coming up tomorrow!

Mid-Autumn 2014 Mooncake Roundup: Dragon Fruit with Coconut Single Yolk, beetroot infused Crimson Opera, and traditional Foochow lard mooncakes!

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crimson opera

We bought a lot of mooncakes this year – so much so that there’s a lot of leftovers still sitting in the pantry! The Mid-Autumn Festival festival is based on a rather interesting legend:

There was an noble archer called Hou Yi who shoots down 9 of the 10 suns scorching the Earth and was hailed as a hero and pronounced King by the people. However, he eventually he grew corrupted during his reign and became obsessed with finding the Elixir of Life (for immortality) and coveted it for himself. His wife, knowing that he has become an evil ruler, decided not to give it to him and swallowed it herself to save the world from her tyrannical husband.

donutes mooncakes

That was the version I was familiar with – it was told by my grandparents. It’s also listed under Mid-Autumn mythology in Wikipedia. My great-grandmother was a great believer in legends and *swore* I would get my ear cut if I dared looked at the full moon during Mid-Autumn Festival. Apparently the magnificence of Yi’s wife would somehow reach down from the celestial heavens and slice off the ear of an innocent 7 year old boy just coz he wondered what the bright light was.

mooncake 2014

Okay, I was actually quite naughty and stared stubbornly at the moon in spite of her admonitions and my great-grandma (God bless her soul) actually took out a great big pair of tailoring scissors and seriously wanted to cut my ear lobe off (!!!) to make her point. Fortunately, my uncles saw the severity of the situation and took the scissors away from her. I still remember her story though. Yeah, I was raised with lots of TLC. smirk

mooncakes 2014

It’s like how the original Grimm Brothers stories were all very twisted and realistic (with a veritable cast of regular people with all their flaws) but children’s storybooks and eventually Disney changed them all to become easy-to-digest nice stories without any of the nastiness.

I digress, here’s this year’s mooncake roundup! πŸ™‚

1. Donutes Taiwanese Mung Bean Mooncakes

taiwanese mooncakes

These come in a box of 9 pieces for RM 49.50. There are two flavors – Mung Bean Original and Mung Bean Crisp Garlic. The latter is quite interesting and it’s the first box of mooncakes I got for my better half’s parents.

2. Dragon Fruit with Coconut Single Yolk

dragon fruit coconut

I found this to be the most interesting from Tai Thong’s offerings this year. It’s a dragon fruit flavored mooncake with a single yolk inside – what makes it intriguing is the coconut jam (kaya) surrounding the preserved egg yolk. I was quite pleased to find the flavor combination works very well.

3. Shanghai Egg Yolk Mooncakes

yong sheng shanghai mooncakes

This one I bought in Sibu from the import speciality grocer Ta Kiong for RM 49. There are 8 mini Shanghai mooncakes inside and they’re individually wrapped in twin packs.

egg yolk pies

It’s made by Yong Sheng and they’ve been around since 1952 – before Malaysia’s Independence Day! Each of the miniature pies have a full sized egg yolk inside and I gave them to my dear and she quite liked it. The black sesame topping goes very well with the flaky pastry.

homemade shanghai mooncakes

I also have a home-made version from Fairy Flower Cake Shop which comes in a box of 6. Surprisingly, the home made ones are quite expensive since they’re small batch.

4. Starbucks Mid-Autumn Mooncakes 2014

starbucks mooncake

I wrote about the Starbucks Mid-Autumn Mooncakes in a previous post. These are miniature 90 gram mooncakes – slightly less than Β½ the size of regular mooncakes.

5. D24 and Musang King Mooncakes

durian mooncakes 2014

My dear kindly bought me two durian flavored mooncakes coz I really like durians and I really like mooncakes. We’ve had them last year and we found them tasty – it’s in the 2013 Mid-Autumn Mooncake Roundup.

6. Traditional Foochow Lard Mooncakes

jing su gao

These are called jing su gao and they’re traditional Foochow lard mooncakes. They don’t have no fancy snowskin, chocolate or ice cream mooncakes back in the days. This was all they had. You’ll notice that all three (3) packs are different despite looking the same. It’s made by 3 distinct bakers – Sin Hing Leong Cake Store, Kinsen Trading Co and Fairy Flower (Ko Kee) Cake Store.

foochow mooncakes

The middle one looks pleasingly brownish-yellow like freshly baked cookies while the outer two are a pale white. It’s due to the lard vs butter content. My favorite would be from Fairy Flower (Ko Kee) Cake Store – it has the right combination of lard and butter to my taste buds. These Foochow mooncakes are more like biscuits (or cookies) with a crumbly texture and a distinctive taste of lard.

7. Taste of Crimson Opera

taste of crimson opera

This is Casahana’s flagship mooncake of 2014! It costs RM 19.50 per mooncake and we bought it the day before Mid-Autumn Festival. They also have a charcoal black sesame brown sugar omochi mooncake called Dark Knight but I decided to go for their signature one – expansively named β€œTaste of Crimson Opera”.

beetroot cheese chocolate

There’s a burst of beetroot and cocoa followed by the tartness of cheese and creamy white chocolate. There’s nothing traditional about this mooncake – all of the 4 ingredients (beetroot, white chocolate, cocoa, cheese) are not something you’ll usually find in a mooncake.

beetroot mooncake

The intricate floral pattern on the top of the mooncake is beautiful too! I was pleased to find that the beetroot is also baked into the skin (so the color isn’t artificial) and it’s not too thick. I would have thought the flowers would make the skin thicker but it’s actually part of the skin. This gets Best of 2014 from us! πŸ™‚

Starbucks Mid-Autumn Mooncakes 2014

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Starbucks Mid-Autumn Mooncake Collection 2014

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.

Starbucks Exclusive D24 Durian Mooncake

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.

Starbucks Signature Banana Chocolate Mooncake

These are not full-sized mooncakes – it’s mini mooncakes!

Here’s the Starbucks Mid-Autumn Mooncake Collection 2014:

Apricot Hazelnut Latte Mooncake

Starbucks Mooncakes 2014

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.

Apricot Hazelnut Latte Mooncake

There’s also hazelnut lotus paste inside with bits of chunky apricot and the faux β€œegg 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

Starbucks 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.

Chewy Nutty Cranberry Mooncake

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

Starbucks Mooncake Collection 2014

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.

Signature Banana Chocolate Mooncake

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

Starbucks 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.

Starbucks Mooncakes

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.

Mid-Autumn 2013 Mooncake Roundup: Beverage flavored, Disney and Musang King mooncakes!

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2013 mooncakes

Yup, it’s the annual Mid-Autumn Mooncake Roundup! Oh wait, I don’t think I ever had one. Haha! I believe one of my first mooncake posts was in 2004 – a review on a rather nice licensed S.H.E. limited edition mooncake set. I’ve also made my own mooncakes before.

There’s three batches of mooncakes I got from 3 different manufacturers this year – most of them *new flavors* for 2013:

tai thong mooncake

1. Tai Thong

This is the first mooncake I ate this year. My girlfriend bought it and gave to me coz she knows I love durian mooncakes!

Snow Skin Durian Coulis (RM 18)

durian mooncake

We absolutely adored this mooncake. The durian flesh is unnamed, probably D24 but it’s really good. The skin balances really well with the flesh too so it’s the durian mooncake benchmark for this year!

tai thong durian

We also wanted to get the Imperial Musang King Royale for RM 78 / 2 pieces but it was sold out!

moon cakes

The 2013 new mooncake flavors:

Sweet Paradise (RM 16.50)

This is a snow skin mooncake from the new flavors under Tai Thong’s moooncake offerings for 2013. They’re having a lot of drink and dessert inspired mooncakes and this is a coffee and custard coffering.

Pineapple Sesame Crunch (RM 16.50)

new mooncakes 2013

We didn’t really like this snow skin mooncake – the pineapple β€œegg yolk” is alright but the sesame doesn’t really go well with it.

Low Sugar White Lotus Single Yolk x 3 (RM 16.50)

A low sugar variant (very popular these few years for the health conscious) of an old classic!

Assorted Fruits, Nuts with Chicken Bits (RM 16.50)

This used to be made with lard but a lot of mooncake manufacturers now use chicken to comply with the halal certification (okay for Muslims to consume) which is a shame as this is one of the real original mooncakes and I really doubt Muslims are a huge target market in mooncakes – not enough to make a difference anyway.

Teh Tarik Delight (RM 16.50)

It’s the national drink of Malaysia – now in mooncakes. I bought one for us and one of my future-in laws. It was a bit of a letdown though – it wasn’t as tasty as I thought it would be and the pulled milk tea flavor is sadly missing.

The good thing about the Tai Thong mooncakes is that we got not only 30% off but also 2 free mooncakes (for every 4 purchased in a box set)

tai thong mooncakes

The free mooncakes are:

Limau Manis (RM 16.50)

This is translated as β€œsweet lime” and it’s a baked mooncake. It continues the trend for beverage inspired mooncake (it’s a common drink here) and actually has a sweet lime filling and an asam jeruk (salted dried plum, or known in the states as crack seed) filling as the β€œegg yolk”. I think this isn’t doing well, which is why it’s the designated giveaway mooncake on purchase.

free mooncakes

White Mocha Delight (RM 16.50)

This is another beverage inspired mooncake in the conventional baked format. It has a chocolate and coffee layer but nothing really pops from this. Tai Thong gives out Limau Manis mooncakes for free as default on purchase of every box of 4 but I asked if I can change and the guy there said that this is the only other option he can give out. You can’t change to other similar priced mooncakes and you have to ask to get the White Mocha Delight so I guess these two aren’t exactly flying off the shelves. smirk

2. GODIVA Mid-Autumn 2013 Mooncake Collection

godiva mooncakes

This is a limited edition I got for my better half which cost me RM 159. It’s the most expensive mooncake I ever bought but well worth it. We ate it on the night itself and the entire GODIVA 2013 Mid-Autumn Limited Edition mooncakes was reviewed on a previous post.

3. The Baker’s Cottage

mooncakes discount

We were just getting some bread one day and saw a huge queue of people buying mooncakes. We didn’t get any that day but there was a Musang King durian mooncake that we had our eye on. I swung over on the afternoon of Mid-Autumn festival and saw that they had a 40% discount across the board!

ultimate musang king

Ultimate Musang King (RM 26.80)

disney mooncakes

This was slightly disappointing…at first. It’s a Disney mooncake with Mickey Mouse stamped on it. We both looked apprehensively at the filling since it doesn’t have the same β€œreal durian flesh” groove going for it. However, after a couple of bites, it turned out that it was really good in its own way too! I’ll say it’ll give Tai Thong’s Snow Skin Durian Coulis a good run for it’s money. Note the difference between the fillings though – this doesn’t have an interior “egg yolk” of real durian flesh:

musang king mooncake

The Bakington version is made with Musang King durians, which explains the price premium. It’s a licensed Disney product too.

Cheesy Choc-Oreo (RM 16.10)

oreo mooncake

I know that my dear loves Oreo (have bought chocolate covered Oreos for her before) and this mooncake seems very promising. It’s a baked mooncake and it’s good but it’s nothing to write home about. It’s just passable but not really breaking any new ground. It does have real Oreo cookies inside though.

Supreme Manju (RM 16.50)

supreme manju 2013

This outstanding mooncake is what the both of us liked the most this year! It was heavily promoted by The Baker’s Cottage – there’s a huge poster saying something along the lines of β€œ2013 new flavor” and so I decided to get one of it to check out.

supreme manju mooncake

It’s bubble wrapped and treated with a lot of respect. This one is baked in-house unlike the licensed Disney mooncakes…and it’s delicious!

The Supreme Manju truly lives up to its name (which I take to mean β€œsupreme satisfaction”) – it’s a Cantonese style Shanghai mooncake with flaky pastry and a toasted pecan nut on top. There’s just something about the combination of the style of the mooncake (always loved Shanghai style pastry over baked or snow skin mooncakes) with the salted egg yolk, mung bean and lotus seed paste combined with maple and custard.

supreme manju

It just works! We just opened it last night (as in Saturday night) and we both loved it! It’s not only cheaper than Tai Thong’s offerings but it’s a new flavor that is so edible, so delicious that my dearest told me it makes you want to have another bite just after finishing one. I agree, the flavor profile is amazing and I wish I had gotten more of this flagship bakery mooncake. It get the title of Best of 2013 from us! πŸ™‚

Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Limited Edition Mooncake Collection

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Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Collection

I saw the Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Limited Edition Collection last week at the Suria KLCC shop in Malaysia. I was quite intrigued and thought it would make a lovely gift for my girlfriend. There’s a box that cost RM 463 (I think) and I figured it’ll be worth it since it’s premium chocolate mooncakes and you only get it once a year.

Godiva 2013 Full Moon Indulgence

This is the poster I saw – Full Moon Indulgence.

Godiva 2013 Mooncakes Limited Edition

However, when I came back just 24 hours later, the box set was sold out! This really is a limited edition run. There’s a RM 249 box set but I didn’t quite like that since it has the regular GODIVA range of chocolates inside.

Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Limited Edition

Thus, I bought the GODIVA 2013 Mid-Autumn Festival Limited Edition box that was in the poster – it’s RM 159 for one large chocolate mooncake and 8 mini chocolate mooncakes.

Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Price

That’s the most expensive box of mooncakes I’ve ever purchased! It’s worth it though coz it’s for my better half. πŸ™‚

There are two types of large chocolate mooncakes – this Belgium purveyor of fine chocolates produced a dark chocolate version and a milk chocolate version. The RM 159 box only has the dark chocolate version but there are 8 mini-mooncakes called Pepite Mooncake Chocolates that gives you a taste of the entire range of the Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Festival collection!

Godiva 2013 Mooncakes

The 3 different flavored chocolate mooncakes are:

White Chocolate Mooncake: Strawberry-Pomegranate Crunchy

This is a white chocolate mooncake with a filling of crispy strawberry crunch and pomegranate chocolate ganache. I liked this one the most – the white chocolate exterior tastes sweet and the strawberries inside has bits of fruit still on it!

Milk Chocolate Mooncake: Apricot-Peach Crunchy

The milk chocolate exterior is made with Ghana milk cocoa, Turkish hazelnut and Louisiana walnut. The two different nuts makes up the two layers inside the chocolate mooncake and the two different fruits makes it taste like a nectarine dipped chocolate.

Dark Chocolate Mooncake: Mango-Passion Fruit Crunch

This is 64% Peruvian dark chocolate as the exterior with soy beans in Hawaiian almond paste and caramel hazelnut to balance the bitter dark chocolate. I like the mango and passion fruit inside too! This is also available in the large size that we’re going to eat tonight!

I think you can buy the large chocolate mooncakes individually for about RM 80 (calculating back from the box price) but I got the 9 piece Mid-Autumn Gift Box since I wanted to try all three flavors and the large mooncakes are only available in dark and milk chocolate.

godiva 2013 collection us

It’s the most expensive mooncake I’ve ever bought but I think it’s also the most unique one! We’ve had the Pepite Mooncake Chocolates (one of each flavor) and we’re saving the big one for tonight. The 9-piece Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Festival Collection has one large dark chocolate mooncake and 8 pepeite mooncake chocolates (2 of white chocolate, 3 each of white and dark chocolate).

Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Mooncake

The box looks good too – it’s packed in a full moon configuration! πŸ™‚

Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival with the Future In-Laws

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hb ling ethel

This photo was taken by the little one!

mooncake festival 2013

We just celebrated the Mid-Autumn festival last night! Yup, it’s several days early but that was the date it was decided on since Monday is a public holiday and everyone could make it. I was pleased to be invited by my better half’s parents to come over for dinner.

mooncakes in laws

I bought some mooncakes to bring along as a gift. I spotted a teh tarik (pulled milk tea) version which I wanted them to try while my dear chose more conventional ones like white lotus and assorted nuts with chicken bits. The Imperial Musang King Royale (RM 78 / 2 pcs) has long been sold out.

mid autumn dinner 2013

It’s good to have a home cooked meal while celebrating the mooncake festival in a home setting. My family is partly in Sibu and partly in Singapore so I don’t get that myself.

dragon lantern

There were also a lot of kids playing lanterns – I remember this vividly from my childhood and both of us lit some as well. Haha!

mooncakes 2013

There’s a lot of weird and wonderful lanterns now – the little one got an Angry Birds version while the big one got a rather unwieldy and large dragon, which burned on one side after a while.

mooncake family 2013

It was a good night spent with the future in-laws. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 2013! πŸ™‚

Project Ferrero Rocher Mooncake: Balls of Fire

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Project Ferrero Rocher Mooncake was initiated to commemorate the Mid Autumn Festival tonight. I haven’t been cooking in a long time and I took advantage of the season to create a dubious sixthseal.com style culinary delight. πŸ˜‰

stuff

Ferrero Rocher chocolates
Top Gun Exclusive Wine
Dooley’s Original Toffee and Vodka liqueur
Ocean Spray cranberry juice
Golden Circle baby carrots
RugenFisch Mackerel Fillets in tomato sauce
Ideal milk (evaporated milk)
Pudding mooncake premix and molds

You don’t actually need the Ocean Spray cranberry juice, I got that for a friend for her UTI problems. πŸ˜‰

preload 
 
The first step is to pour out several shots of the Dooley’s Original Toffee and Vodka liqueur (RM 120 at respectable bottle shops) for consumption. You will need it for the tedious task ahead. πŸ˜‰

water

Next, measure out 300 ml of water for the pudding mixture. The recipe calls for 700 ml but I decided that the remainder should consist of Dooley’s Original Toffee and Vodka for more oomph, so don’t drink too much of that first, start with the wine.

top up

Top up the measuring cup to 700 ml with Dooley’s Original Toffee and Vodka. This will use up more than half of the bottle but fret not – it’s worth it.

clear

Dump the pudding mooncake mixture into a saucepan and put the H2O with ethanol beside it. This is to avoid mistakes during excessive consumption of the latter liquid.

first pour

Put the saucepan with the powder in it on low heat on a regular stove and pour the liquid in slowly.

stir

Stir the mixture slowly while keeping it on low heat for about 10 minutes. It is important not to let it burn or “bruise” the mixture by stirring too hard. I’m not sure about the latter statement, the person in charge told me that.

pour

Pour the liquid into the small mold after 10 minutes and let it set for about 15 minutes at room temperature before chucking it into the fridge for an additional 10 minutes.

small done

You’ll know it’s ready if it doesn’t fall out of the mold when you turn it upside down.

massage

There is a technique to extract the small mooncake without damaging the integrity and aesthetic design which involves massaging the sides, but I never picked up that skill.

small mooncake look

The small mooncake with Dooley’s Original Toffee and Vodka (which is meant to emulate the “egg yolk” in traditional mooncakes) should look like this when it’s done.

ideal

The next step involves making the larger mooncake, which uses a different premix that requires Ideal milk (evaporated milk).

pour into

250 ml of Ideal milk is added to 400 ml of water and poured into the powdered premix.

half capacity

The usual 10 minutes of stirring on low heat is applied before the mixture is scooped into the larger mooncake mold. It is essential to only scoop the liquid to half the mold capacity, as it has to hold the smaller mooncake as the “yolk”.

yolk

The smaller Dooley’s Original Toffee and Vodka mooncakes is to be placed into the larger mooncake mold upside down (design facing down).

ferrero rocher

I took the liberty of adding a Ferrero Rocher chocolate as the “yolk” of one of the mooncakes to make my own variation.

add fr

The Ferrero Rocher chocolate is surprisingly resilient…it doesn’t even melt in the boiling hot temperature of the liquid pudding.

unmelt

It’s much better than M&Ms – melts in your mouth, not on the stove. It’s amazing!

set in fridge

The larger mooncake mold is then filled to the brim and left to set in the fridge for a full 30 minutes.

ferrero rocher mooncake dish

Once that’s done, extract the Ferrero Rocher mooncake from its mold and place it on a plate. Garnish with baby carrots and the mackerel fillets in tomato sauce.

ferrero rocher mooncake

This is the “balls of fire” bit to the recipe – mixing in salty and spicy elements to the dish…and the alcohol (Dooley’s Toffee and Vodka) of course. Serve with wine for a complete meal.

bon appetit

Bon Appetit!

Happy Mid Autumn Festival everyone! πŸ™‚

Mid-Autumn Dinner

by

I had a belated Mid-Autumn Festival dinner today with a group of my friends from high school.
The list of attendees are: Ung Hing, who arrived 1 1/2 hours late because there was a train
accident which delayed his train, Karen, Fu Liang (the only one who is not from our high school),
Thien Na, who drove her Lancer down from the city, Chuck Fong and his brother Chuck Yong, the
elusive Christopher, Adrian and of course me. We went to Ocean King in Glen Waverley and had one of
their banquets. Off my memory (which is slowly becoming erratic) there was abalone soup, prawns
with noodles, black pepper beef, fish (a meal isn’t complete without fish, or so I hear), spicy
breaded chicken, some tofu dish, fruits and tong shui. Thien Na and I had the misfortune of sitting
beside the rice holder so we were delegated to serving rice the whole night. Heh. The banquet only
came to about A$15 each, so that’s pretty good for the dishes that are available.

Group photo at Ocean King. I forgot to put force flash on, making the picture somewhat
noisy.

After dinner, we headed down to Intencity, an arcade just opposite the restaurant. Chuck Fong
trashed everyone with his Virtual On skillz and I dominated the Daytona race track. Well, perhaps
dominate is not exactly the right term because Thien Na kept catching up to me. Karen on the other
hand was nowhere to be seen. =D

Daytona action. Karen (furthest from camera) is devastated at her loss. Heh.

The fruity looking guns are from…

Point Blank.

It’s not even 10 pm yet, and Karen and Ung Hing are already sneaking off to get some quality
time alone behind the arcade machines. =D

The line forming to dethrone Chuck Fong at Virtual On.

Another victim falls to Chuck Fong’s Virtual On skillz.

Pedal Faster Karen!

You don’t want to meet us in a dark alley. We’ll probably force you to play Point Blank with us
or something. =D

I find pictures in my digicam that I don’t remember taking. Heh. =D

This is me and Thien Na. She sat in the row beside mine in Form Five. Interesting fact: All but
three of the people that came tonight are from the same class in Form Five.

The girls. I’ve been in the same class as Karen since Primary 1. Imagine that. =D

A partial group shot in the arcade.

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