Blog Post #2

The moon in the plate

October 3rd, 2009. This was not an unusual day to most people in the world, but it was important to 1.3 billion Chinese. It was Mid-Autumn Festival.

Mid-Autumn Festival, which means the middle of the autumn, is on August 15th of Chinese lunar calendar. It is a traditional Chinese festival that has a strong relationship with moon. The festival is also called Moon Festival. A legend about the origin of this festival explained why Mid-Autumn is correlated to moon.

It is said that thousands of years ago, there were ten suns in the sky. All people suffered from intense heat everyday. A man named Hou Yi was good at toxophily. He shot arrows to the sky and killed nine suns. Undoubtedly he became the hero of the country. As his reward, the Heavenly Queen Mother gave Hou Yi the Elixir of Immortality, but she warned him that he must use it wisely. At the same time, many youths visited him and took him as their toxophily coach. On August 15th, Peng Meng, one of the youths, tried to steal the Elixir. Hou’s wife, Chang E, found out his polt. She knew that she could not fight against Peng. Thus she ate the Elixir and flied to moon. From then on, people kowtowed to moon to memorize Chang E every year.

On Mid-Autumn Festival, moon will be round and bright. People always appreciate moon and ate moon cakes together. The moon cake looks like moon because of its color and round shape, which and symbolizes reunion. People believe that eating moon cakes can strengthen the relationship between family members and bring the whole family luck.

In China, moon cakes have many different types and different flavors. The most ordinary moon cake is Cantonese moon cake, which you can find in China Town in Atlanta. Cantonese moon cakes are always sweet and soft. The wrappers are thin and have gorgeous traditional Chinese patterns, such as dragon, carved on them. The stuff of them can be lotus-nut paste, red bean paste, coconut paste and so on. Sometimes you can find a salted yolk in the Cantonese moon cake. The Cantonese moon cake is not only welcome in China, but also sells to other countries such as Japan, Korea and America. You can always find Cantonese moon cake in China Town all over the world.

My favorite type of moon cake is the Su moon cake, which is popular in Shanghai and some provinces near it such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Not like the Cantonese moon cake, the Su moon cake can be both sweet and salty. Su moon cakes’ wrappers are crisp and thick. They are similar to but not exactly the same as soda biscuits. The stuff of Su moon cake can be pork, sea sedge and sesame paste. Some companies produce special Su moon cakes for vegetarian and Buddhist monks. These moon cakes are absolutely healthy food because they will not contain any meat or animal fat. The appearance of the Su moon cake is not as elaborate as that of Cantonese moon cakes. Since the wrapper is crisp, patterns can not be carved on Su moon cakes. Some Su moon cakes will have characters drawn on with red edible pigment to show the flavor of it.

In China, many areas have their own kinds of moon cakes. Beijing has the Jing moon cake stuffed with nut paste. Yunnan has Dian moon cake with ham inside. These kinds of moon cakes are always special and distinctive. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried them yet. Maybe I can tell you the taste of it next time.

Most of the moon cakes need to be baked and can be stored in room temperature. But the ice-wrapper moon cake is an exception. Actually the wrapper of the ice-wrapper cake is not ice. It is so called only because this kind of moon cake has to be store in refrigerator. Ice-wrapper moon cakes look like colorful transparent Cantonese moon cakes. The way to cook them is same as that of western deserts. Today, the most famous ice-wrapper moon cake should be Starbucks moon cakes. It sounds a little bit ridiculous that Starbucks provides moon cakes. But it is true. Though Starbucks has an extremely short history of making moon cakes for about five years, it has developed several flavors of moon cake, such as coffee, vanilla, cheese, green tea, and cranberry. In fact, the ice-wrapper moon cake is a kind western food with Chinese aspect.

Today, the most fashionable moon cake should be ice-cream moon cake. It was first invented by the ice-cream company Häagen-Dazs in China. Now you can also find ice-cream moon cakes in Dairy Queen and some other ice-cream shops. It is actually ice-cream with chocolate shell in moon-cake shape. Obviously, the flavor of these moon cakes are depended on the flavors of the ice-cream stuffed. The wrapper can be white chocolate, milk chocolate or black chocolate. Though the weather is cool in mid-autumn, the ice-cream moon cakes are still popular because of the delicious taste.

The traditional moon cake such as the Cantonese moon cake or the Su moon cake is usually cheap in China. All the ingredients used are common. A moon cake will only cost about fifty cents. The ice-wrapper moon cake and the ice-cream moon cake are more expensive and always sold in package. It will take you ten dollars to get a box of ice-cream moon cakes with four individual cakes inside. There used to be a kind of luxurious moon cake two years ago. The most expensive package would be a hundred dollars or more. Actually, the moon cake is the same as usual. The costly part is the pack of the moon cake. The box is always made of precious wood and jewel is used for decoration. Silver chopsticks and golden knife are always appended. But now, these extremely expensive moon cakes are prohibited. People should pay more attention on the taste of the moon cake but not the outside case or the attachment.

Nowadays, moon cakes are usually produced by machine. Only a few restaurants and bakeries provide hand-made moon cakes. We can hardly find recipes of moon cakes online since it is really difficult to make them at home. Some brands of moon cakes, such as Hong Kong Maxims, Xinghualou, and Daoxiangcun, have a fairly long history over hundreds of years and are still popular today.

This is my first Mid-Autumn Festival in America. I bought some moon cakes from China Town. They were traditional Cantonese moon cakes with red bean paste and lotus-nut paste stuffed. I never thought that I could find such appetizing and tasty moon cakes in America. They were almost the same as the moon cakes I bought in China. That day, Atlanta was clear and cloudless. The moon was round and pure, shining brightly. I degusted the moon cake, enjoyed the sight of moon alone. I talked with my parents by MSN. Though we could not discuss the moon because of time difference, I still felt warm and contented. It seems that I have never left them. I realized wherever my parents and I were, our hearts would always connected with each other.

In my eyes is the moon in the sky
In my hand is the moon in the plate.


Moon Cake Rating:★★★★☆