Moon Cakes

Mooncakes from Raffles Hotel

Tung Lok Mooncakes
Too pretty to eat mooncakes from Bakerzin

Fruity Snowskin Combo from Goodwood Park Hotel

Snow skin mooncakes in the sweetest colours
Flaky yam mooncakes in the foreground
The Mid Autumn Festival is just around the corner, falling on Oct 3 (the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar).

According to popular legend, eating and giving mooncakes to friends and family are a tradition to commemorate the Ming revolutionaries' successful attempt to overthrow the Mongols. Today, it has become a creative battle ground for bakeries, restaurants and hotels as they come up with innovative ways of winning over customers with their creations. Mooncakes have gone far beyond the basic and traditional white lotus paste with melon seeds and egg yolk.There is a myriad of tastes ranging from liqueur types to local fruits and chocolates.

Raffles Hotel is famous for its snow skin mooncakes with champagne truffle and ganache. Every year, fans of this exquisite tasting mooncake wait eagerly for it. It comes with a retro looking tin box which is becoming a collector's item. Similarly, the Tung Lok restaurant group has also come up with its own winner - a red bean and champagne mooncake packaged in a beautiful turquoise tin box with a Chinese beauty on its lid.

Bakeries like Bakerzin have also joined in this lucrative business. The design on the mooncake is something even Anna Sui would approve. The black mooncake that looks like a compact powder case comes with a sesame seed flavour. How quaint !

Goodwood Park Hotel has a set of 4 local fruit flavours packaged in a beautiful gold box. Durian, mango, chempedak and the latest flavour launched just this year - soursop.
For those who are not too fond of mooncakes due to its sweetness, you may be won over by the taste of soursop. The mooncake filling is made of real chunks of fresh soursop and just like its namesake, it has a pleasant tangy sourish taste with just a tinge of sweetness.

Some prefer the flaky yam mooncakes made famous by Crown Prince Hotel. Its dough is made by rolling together alternating layers of oily dough and flour that has been stir-fried in oil. The most common filling for these Teochew crusty mooncakes is a sweet paste made from yam or taro.