Mooncake is often consumed during mid autumn festival. 

These traditional delicacy is rich in flavour with thin pastry wrapping around various filling such as lotus paste, with salted duck egg yolk or with spiced mixed nuts and seeds. 

What is Mooncake?

Mooncake is a traditional Chinese dessert serve during mid-autumn festival in Chinese culture. It will be on 1st October for year 2020, which is next week!

What are Chinese Mooncakes made of?

Traditional mooncakes are made of sweet soft thin pastry wrap around various filling.

Mooncake is filled with either lotus paste with nuts (see recipe card below), spiced mixed nuts (see recipe card below), lotus paste with salted duck egg yolk (I have to try this next time, didn't plan earlier!)
However, there are other types of mooncakes too. 

   There are snow skinned mooncakes. This type of mooncake is almost similar to mochi, which soft and slightly chewy skin, we like to say, it has that "Q Q" texture!

Some may prefer to wrap mooncake with light layered pastry. This type of mooncake is know as Thousand layers mooncake.

One of the best mooncake I have ever tasted was an ice-cream mooncake!!!

What's not to like about ice-cream, right?

How to Make Traditional Chinese Mooncakes?

Full long list of ingredients and method are in my printable recipe card below.

And to better understand the process, I have made a video on How to make Mooncakes!

The recipe for these delicious and addictive mooncakes is from my late mother-in-law. 

Her mooncakes were selling like hotcakes in her hometown back then.


1. Making pastry.

 Golden syrup mix into sieved flour.

   Mix it to form a dough. Rest for at least 7 hours.

2. Wrap pastry around your favourite mooncake filling.

3. Mooncake mould.

I opt for this mould (for 75g mooncake bought from ebay) instead of the traditional wooden mould.

Traditional wooden mould is perfect for mooncake with salted egg yolk filling as it has depth.
The salted egg yolk will be crush if I were to use this spring press mooncake mould.

4. Mooncake ready to be baked in the oven.

What not to do with Mooncake baking?

1. To be generous with the mooncake pastry!

I did that mistake, by using more than needed pastry to wrap my mooncakes.
They ended up with elephant feet.

As the dough is soft, the pastry was unable to resist gravitational force!

2. To brush mooncakes surface with egg wash prior to baking.

All those pretty and pronounce pattern will disappear!
Best to par bake mooncakes before brushing with egg wash.

Are Mooncakes vegan?

Mooncakes with salted egg yolk is definitely not Vegan!
But my recipe below is vegetarian and vegan friendly.

How is Mooncake served?

Mooncake is best consume is at least 24 hours after baking.
This process will let the baked mooncake pastry rest for the flavours to develop. 

It is alright to consume immediately but the pastry might not have time to do its magic, and it may turn out like biscuit.

After that 24 hours resting period, mooncake is cut into 8 pieces. 

Mooncake is rich in flavour, so to eat the whole mooncake or even half in one sitting is a bit too much! (for me though!!)
Serve with some chinese tea.

How long can I keep my mooncakes?

Since no preservatives is used, and some mooncakes might have egg yolk in it, so I would consume within 7 days.
Keep them in an airtight container.

Do mooncakes needs to be refrigerated?

Best keep in room temperature. One of the ingredients used is oil, hence it might harden in the fridge.

Can I heat up mooncake?

Mooncake is best eaten at room temperature!

Video on How To Bake Traditional Chinese Mooncake

Other Asian Sweets and Savouries 

You may wish to try these Asian sweets and Savouries to celebrate Chinese mid-autumn festivals!

• Tang Yuan (sweet glutinous balls)
• Turnip Cakes
• Chicken Bak Kwa (meat jerky)
• Golden Fried Wontons