Every year, it is a tradition that my mom and I make mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節). We make them around 1-2 weeks before the actual day because the mooncakes are not ready to eat right away - they need time to "settle". We make around 50-60 mooncakes every year to give to friends, relatives, and also for ourselves to enjoy. We also take orders too. One year, we made over 100 mooncakes because a lot of our friends ordered from us. Yes, they are THAT good! Once people try our mooncakes, they always come back and tell us that the quality of our mooncakes is far better than the commercial ones. My Mom and I make the traditional kind of mooncakes, lotus seed paste (considered to be the most luxurious kind of filling) with two/three/four yokes. No contemporary, "healthy version" mooncakes for us. I mean, come on, it is only once a year that you get to eat mooncakes, might as well indulge on the traditional ones! Props to Ray for the lovely picture on the left =)
What makes our mooncakes so much better than the ones that you find at commercial outlets is that we use 100% lotus paste, as pure as it gets with no additives whatsoever. The mooncakes they sell in restaurants / bakeries / supermarkets contain "watered-down" versions of lotus paste, which is necessary for them to cut costs (they often use white kidney bean paste as filler). This is because lotus seed paste is EXPENSIVE! But since our mooncakes are homemade, we do NOT cut corners. Therefore, our mooncakes are very moist, rich and dense, unlike the dry and hard mooncakes you find elsewhere. We also throw away egg yolks that are not in perfect condition -they need to be big, round, with a nice golden orange color. My mom gets these salted duck eggs and lotus seed paste straight from a supplier that supplies to numerous Chinese restaurants in the GTA.
Lotus seed paste.
Salted duck egg yolks that were first rinsed with Chinese wine then placed in the oven.
