Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional festival of China and used to be as important as Spring Festival. It is usually celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. In 2021, Mid-Autumn Festival is on 21st of September. On this day, people always watch the moon and eat mooncakes (Chinese: 月饼).
The round mooncakes, symbolizing the reunion of the family members, resembled western pies in taste and consistency. The custom of eating mooncakes can date back to the Tang Dynasty and became a diet custom for the whole nation in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Now, mooncakes are of numerous kinds, with different flavors in various regions.
Five-Nuts Mooncake
Five-nuts mooncake belongs to a kind of cantonese-style mooncake and is the most famous among all kinds of mooncakes. It has exquisite ingredients, sweet taste, soft and crisp, with a variety of nutty fragrance. Five-nuts mooncake is filled with peanuts, walnut seeds, watermelon seeds, almonds and pine nuts. In ancient China, there were five moral principles: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness, and the "five-nuts" is a homonym for them.
Yunnan Ham Mooncake
Yunnan ham mooncake is a famous Yunnan dish with unique flavor. It is made of Yunnan specialty ham, honey, lard, sugar and other fillings, baked with flour for the skin. Yunnan ham mooncake not only has the delicious ham, but also has the sweet and salty tempting sauce. Legend has it that in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, an imperial chef served Yunnan ham mooncake to Emperor Yongli, who praised repeatedly for it. Since then, Yunnan ham mooncake has been listed as a dim sum in royal kitchens.
Snow Skin Mooncake
Different from traditional mooncakes, the main ingredient of snow skin mooncake is glutinous rice. The process of making snow skin mooncake is simple and requires no baking. The taste is smooth and elastic, and it's usually kept in the refrigerator. The fillings of snow skin mooncake are very diverse, mainly with sweet bean paste, lotus seed paste, jujube paste, fruits and vegetables. Snow skin mooncake is first introduced to mainland China from Hong Kong. Its appearance dramatically changed the mooncake market, which has a history of more than 700 years, and quickly swept across China.
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