Chocolate Lava Mooncake 巧克力流心月餅

Oh chocolate, oh chocolate, how much do I love thee, let me count the ways...

So many ways amirite, fellow chocolate lovers?!  I love chocolate in everything, be it sweet or savory.  Nom, nom...can never get enough of that dark chocolately goodness...  So it was that this year for Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節 I decided that we needed some chocolate to celebrate the moon!

Thus was the birth of a new styled mooncake, a Chocolate Lava Mooncake 巧克力流心月餅, a concoction of moist chocolate flavored filling with a secret heart of molten chocolate ganache, all wrapped in a tender golden skin.  Wasn't too sure how it would turn out, with the lava center and all, but OMgosh it was fantastic.  We were tickled pink with this chocolatey mooncake!  And the center, it was all melty!  Yeah chocolate chocolate!!

Snowskin Butter Mochi Red Bean Paste Mooncake 牛油麻糬紅豆冰皮月餅

It's that time of the year again!  The time of the fullest moon of the year,  of gaily dressed folk swinging their Chinese lanterns high, glowing orbs set against a magnificent moonlit night...the night of the Mid Autumn Festival!   Mid Autumn Festival comes early this year, following the dictates of the fickle lunar calendar and, if the moon we saw tonight is any indicator, the Mid Autumn moon this year is going to be AMAZING!

As you probably know already, we've made most of the traditional mooncakes before, like the double yolk lotus paste mooncake, sesame paste mooncake, snowskin custard moon, five nut mooncake, etc.  This year we wanted to try something new.

Poking around, brainstorming, I noticed that some mooncakes nowadays are filled with mochi instead of the traditional filling pastes like lotus paste.  I was intrigued, what an interesting idea!

After a bit of a brainstorm I decided to make Snowskin Butter Mochi Red Bean Paste Mooncakes 牛油麻糬紅豆冰皮月餅, chilled mooncakes wrapped in delicate skin, filled with tender, chewy mochi deeply infused with notes of butter and milk and a heart of luscious sweet red bean paste.  What can I say, this innovative combination turned out a most yummilicious mooncake!

Osmanthus Flower Jelly 桂花糕

Chinese Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節 is coming around the corner!  It's the time of the full harvest moon, glowing lanterns held aloft by small hands, long nights of gazing longingly at Chang-O 嫦娥, lovely ethereal goddess of the moon, and stuffing of bellies to bursting point with delectable mooncakes, perfectly round to symbolize reunion.  

Snow Skin Mooncake 冰皮月餅

It's almost that time of the year again, the time of the glorious harvest moon, the Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節, a right jolly time in Hong Kong that all, the children especially, look forward to.  And why not?  A beautiful fuller than full moon hung high in the velvet blackness of the night, a pass to stay up and play as late as one wants, delicately beautiful lighted lanterns and myriad glow sticks in hand, and, best of all, mooncakes 月餅 galore to eat!  

We've already made the White Lotus Paste with Double Yolk Mooncake 雙黃白蓮蓉月餅 and the amazing Five Nuts Mooncake 五仁月餅, so this year we thought we would make the Hong Kong creation known as Snow Skin Mooncake 冰皮月餅, also known as Ice Skin Mooncake, a modern twist where the traditional mooncake fillings are wrapped in a delicate, light, mochi-esque skin.

Macau Almond Cookie 澳門杏仁餅

Chinese Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節 is just around the corner and my little girl is beside herself with anticipation!  (It's her favorite holiday of the year plus she gets to stay up late!)  

The yearly celebration of the biggest moon of the year, the harvest moon, Mid Autumn Festival so much fun here in Hong Kong! There are moon cakes to make, shopping expeditions to make, lanterns to light and little children to dress up in festive Chinese attire , moon gazing outings to plan!  

After an early preparation of our traditional double yolk lotus seed paste mooncakes and our five nut mooncakes, I thought why not make an extra traditional treat to have on hand in case of the extra munchies?  I ended up making some of these delectably light and flavorsome Macau Almond Cookies  澳門杏仁餅, quite easy to make and delightfully easy on the eyes.

Five Nuts Mooncake Part II 五仁月餅

We're finally ready to assemble our deliriously nutty and yummilicious Five Nuts Mooncake!  Only we seem to have missed Mid Autumn Festival!  Ooops!  To check out our excuses for posting late and our detailed and crazy Five Nuts Mooncake ingredient sourcing and pre-assembly phase, please see our previous post Five Nuts Mooncake Part I  五仁月餅.  

So, at this point we have all the ingredients sourced, toasted and roasted, chopped and bopped into the right configurations.  It's time to put this Five Nut Mooncake together!

Five Nuts Mooncake Part I 五仁月餅

Okay, so first off, I know this post is kinda late.  No, no, you're right, it's not kinda, it's totally late!  (And I apologize.)  Mid Autumn Festival is over and done with, lanterns are doused, etc., but, darn it all, I'm going to post this traditional Chinese Five Nut Mooncake 五仁月饼 recipe anyway.

I think I have a couple of pretty good excuses for my lateness, the first being that this wonderful, amazing, fragrant to the heavens, nuttily delicious, soul gripping Five Nuts Mooncake was a b***h to make and the second being that it took us forever to source some of the really traditional ingredients that are supposed to be in the Five Nuts Mooncake.

Boiled Water Caltrop 鮮煮菱角

Nope...these things are not the deadly bat shaped ninja weapons that you're thinking they might be.  Rather, these are Water Caltrops, or 菱角, which are probably some of the funkiest, strangest nuts that ever existed.  I mean, who would know that these are 1) made by Mother Nature herself and 2) that one could actually eat these?!  It looks way too dangerous to eat!  

But it turns out that these mysterious nuts from an aquatic plant similar to the water lily has been cultivated and eaten in different countries for centuries.  The water caltrop even shows up as a motif in one of my favorite books of all time, The Dream of the Red Chamber, where one of the minor characters is even named Xiang Ling 香菱, translated to mean Fragrant Water Caltrop. (You have to read this novel, it's so amazing!)

Chinese Festival Cake - For Tea Time

 

Published: 2011-10-12 

It is always fun, if you have a sweet tooth, to discover new delicious pastries, cookies and cakes that you can bring home.  In this we are lucky as Hong Kong has more than its fair share of yummy pastry shops and bakery shops that sell all kinds of sweets from Chinese style to Western style.  

My relatives (usually female and always on a diet) always go berserk when they come here and see all the yummy pastries presented so nicely in the store windows.  And the sweets here are not over-sweetened like they are in the States.  Recently we picked up this Chinese Festival Cake at the wet market where they were selling all kinds of goodies for the Mid Autumn Festival.

Lotus Paste Double Yolk Mooncake 雙黃白蓮蓉月餅

Every once in a while I veer off the path of sanity and attempt the uncharted, the dangerous, the unsurmountable.  All in the name of good food, of course.  This time it was mooncakes or 雙黃白蓮蓉月餅, Chinese mooncakes for the Mid Autumn Festival, 中秋節.

I decided that this year I would attempt to make my own mooncakes despite never having made them by hand before and, actually now that I think about it, never having eaten homemade mooncake ever in my life.  But once the delectable thought entered my mind, who was I to resist?

Mid Autumn Festival Hong Kong Traditions

Published: 2011-09-15

Caught up in the Hong Kong's simmering excitement in the leadup to the Mid Autumn Festival, or 中秋節, we did alot of walking and more than our customary exploring.  Since the baby was old enough to tag along without too much trouble, we took her to experience for the first time the many and varied Mid Autumn Festival traditions that abound even in a modern city like Hong Kong.

Mooncake Toys - Mid Autumn Festival

Published: 2011-09-15

A very cute mooncake indeed.  Just in time for Mid Autumn Festival, or 中秋節. Did you guess?  It's not really a mooncake at all, but a mooncake toy, purchased from one of the ubiquitous toy vending machines that are found everywhere in Hong Kong.  In recent years around the dates of the important festivals, these vending machines have featured special toys that go along with the festivals.  Usually food items (very Chinese!).

Anyways, we got lucky this year and spotted this beautiful, perfectly made miniature mooncake with its own metal mooncake box.  It's just like the real thing!  But cuter, of course.