This weekend was the Mid Autumn Festival in Vietnam, aka the Moon Festival. This festival coincides with other lunar harvest festivals, such as the Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok).
At school, we had the dragon dance performance to celebrate this special time of year. It is also a Vietnamese tradition to give moon cakes... after all, it is the Moon Festival!
What is a moon cake?
A moon cake is a round type of pastry - stuffed with a thick filling such as red bean paste or lotus seed paste. Moon cakes come in all sorts of varieties. They can be stuffed with salted duck eggs (the yolk represents the moon!), beans and other vegetables, nuts, fruit, and even thing such as shark fin.
What do moon cakes taste like?
It depends on the moon cake. When I first heard of moon cakes, I thought they would be delicious, light, flaky pastries filled with something yummy like fruit or chocolate. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed to be tasting beans and mystery meat (ham? shark? who knows...) inside the first time I took a bite of one. If you talk to Vietnamese people, many say they love moon cakes, and others hate them. Last year I re-gifted my moon cakes. I guess they're kind of like fruit cake... the gift that keeps on giving! If you don't like it, pass it on to someone else...
This year I got some moon cakes from students, and I was surprised to open one of the boxes to find a TIRAMISU MOON CAKE! I had to try it... and it was actually pretty good. Inside it was chocolatey and there was definitely nothing weird like shark fin in there.
Love them or hate them, moon cakes are a strong tradition in Vietnamese culture. Happy Tet Trung Thu!
At school, we had the dragon dance performance to celebrate this special time of year. It is also a Vietnamese tradition to give moon cakes... after all, it is the Moon Festival!
What is a moon cake?
A moon cake is a round type of pastry - stuffed with a thick filling such as red bean paste or lotus seed paste. Moon cakes come in all sorts of varieties. They can be stuffed with salted duck eggs (the yolk represents the moon!), beans and other vegetables, nuts, fruit, and even thing such as shark fin.
What do moon cakes taste like?
It depends on the moon cake. When I first heard of moon cakes, I thought they would be delicious, light, flaky pastries filled with something yummy like fruit or chocolate. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed to be tasting beans and mystery meat (ham? shark? who knows...) inside the first time I took a bite of one. If you talk to Vietnamese people, many say they love moon cakes, and others hate them. Last year I re-gifted my moon cakes. I guess they're kind of like fruit cake... the gift that keeps on giving! If you don't like it, pass it on to someone else...
This year I got some moon cakes from students, and I was surprised to open one of the boxes to find a TIRAMISU MOON CAKE! I had to try it... and it was actually pretty good. Inside it was chocolatey and there was definitely nothing weird like shark fin in there.
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| Tiramisu Moon Cake! |
Love them or hate them, moon cakes are a strong tradition in Vietnamese culture. Happy Tet Trung Thu!
Wow..that is INTERESTING! I, too would have thought that moon cakes would be like a Twinky or something...definitely not thinking beans or sharks! Would love to try the Italian version of moon cakes, the tiramisu!
ReplyDeletelooks lovely <3
ReplyDeletez.a.