Well, it's that time of year here in Hong Kong when everyone goes nuts over mooncakes. And what, pray tell, are mooncakes, you ask? Allow me to elaborate:
On day 15 of the 8th Lunar Moon (or Sept. 25 for you Westerners) starts the beginning of Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Festival, celebrating the harvest and the brightest moon of the year. It is many people's favorite festival as the city lights up with thousands of paper lanterns in all shapes and sizes. Everyone partakes in the festivities and at night, there are parades with the infamous Chinese dragons. People also eat special sweet cakes known as mooncakes.
Mind you, I got all this information from reading my travel guides and this:
(quite informative, you should read it, it's neat)
Long before I knew all about Mid-Autumn Festival, though, I kept seeing signs for Mooncakes. "Mooncakes - Coming Soon!" "Stop here for Mooncakes!" "Mooncake Specials!" "Mooncakes in All Flavours!" These signs can be seen in all the grocery stores, bakeries, restaurants, tea shops, and even the Godiva chocolate store (they have their own limited edition "Mooncake Chocolate":
So, being the inquisitive person that I am and figuring if they are cakes, they can't be that bad, I bought 2 different flavours (yes, I'm becoming British) from Maxim Bakery last week. I passed on the lotus seed paste, sesame seed, tofu and bean paste flavours and opted for the more conventional (at least in my mind) flavors of blueberry and mango. The girl at the bakery unsuccessfully tried to give me instructions as I had told her this would be my first mooncake experience. To this day, I still have no idea what she was trying to tell me.
I went home, made dinner, ate and then with great flourish, presented the blueberry mooncakes to Marc. They were really pretty but really white, like they were uncooked, but hey, you gotta live a little right? Well, we bit into them and they were really doughy and sticky and just didn't taste right at all. I mean, we could taste the blueberry filling but the outside tasted like raw dough. (I wish I had thought to take a picture, sorry.) Mind you, the entire wrapper has Chinese writing and absolutely no English. So, I looked them up online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake
The picture looks like it has been baked, right? So, I put it in the oven, I guess 350 degrees, maybe 10 minutes, I mean they are 1 inch cubed, can't take that long, right? Um, yea, so after about 12 minutes, I take it out and it is oozy and gooey and not at all like the picture on Wiki. At this point, Marc, who ate 3/4 of a mooncake himself, is not feeling so good, so I chuck the whole thing.
The next day, I sent Marc to his office with strict instructions to find out what we did wrong. So he asked his Chinese work colleague what we should have done differently and told her what kind of mooncakes we bought. She said we were eating them right the first time, uncooked, and claimed they were delicious. His British counterpart exclaimed that they were the foulest thing he has ever put in his mouth. I think, after much deliberation, that mooncakes are an acquired taste and that, unless you also eat chicken toes and fish heads, you will never be able to eat a mooncake without gagging. And that's all I have to say about that.
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