Snowy skins, matcha, lava custard — every year the mooncake is reinvented. Every year I go back to the one that was right to begin with.
If you have just moved here, you are about to be given a great many mooncakes. Some will be beautiful. Most will sit in the box.
Here is what I have learned. The good ones come from the local bakeries — Wing Wah, Kee Wah — and not from the hotels with the ribboned boxes, whatever the ribbon suggests. The bakeries have been doing this the longest, and it shows.
They make everything now: snowy mooncakes that live in the fridge, matcha, custard, flavours that did not exist when I was young. I have tried them, and some are genuinely lovely.
And every year I come back to the original — lotus seed paste, with the salted egg yolk in the centre. The yolk is the moon. That is the whole point of it.
“A classic survives because someone got it right the first time, and everyone since has been decorating.
There is something in that worth keeping, and not only in September. Novelty is easy. A classic survives because someone got it right the first time, and everyone since has been decorating.
— Reyna Harilela