TeaChat

In a few days time (22 September 2010) is Chinse Mid-Autumn Festival, and one of the custom in China and South East Asia is to eat Moon Cake*, drink tea while looking at the full moon on that evening. I think mooncakes and pu'erh tea complementing each other very well. Some food are good with pu'erh but other (like apple) makes the tea taste horrible!

*The traditional mooncakes filling is lotus seed paste, but it depends on the oil it used and it might not be suitable for a vegetarian.

sigh...this is the first year in my life im missing mooncake festival. can't bring them in unfortunately, even though i don't eat the type with yolk in them. the mooncakes available in Chicago are atrocious.

the_economist wrote:sigh...this is the first year in my life im missing mooncake festival. can't bring them in unfortunately, even though i don't eat the type with yolk in them. the mooncakes available in Chicago are atrocious.

I think you can buy on line from shop in other US city, is this any good?
http://keewah.us/whitelotusseedw3yolks.aspx

apache wrote:In a few days time (22 September 2010) is one of the custom in China and South East Asia is to eat . drink tea while looking at the full moon on that evening. I think mooncakes and pu'erh tea complimenting each other very well.
The traditional mooncake filling is lotus seed paste, but it depends on the oil it used and it might not be suitable for a vegetarian.

They look tasty but, I can't see paying $10.00 for a cupcake.
Will the prices come down after the full moon?

It depends on the shop, might be. $10.00 per cake is about right if it is good quality. You might think you can easily eat a whole one in one go, but actually very few people would do this as it is very rich. Normally, people would only have 1/4 per day. I sometime only have 1/8 and it last me a whole week!

nonc_ron wrote:

apache wrote:In a few days time (22 September 2010) is one of the custom in China and South East Asia is to eat . drink tea while looking at the full moon on that evening. I think mooncakes and pu'erh tea complimenting each other very well.
The traditional mooncake filling is lotus seed paste, but it depends on the oil it used and it might not be suitable for a vegetarian.

They look tasty but, I can't see paying $10.00 for a cupcake.
Will the prices come down after the full moon?

Over here in Malaysia, it is also quite common to celebrate Mooncake festival. For the past month till now, you can easily find 30 to 40 booths of mooncake sellers in shopping malls. All kinds of brands and these days it comes with very nice gift box.

The difference is that here, people don't really eat mooncake with tea. I didn't even know it until this year.

Price wise, normally they will give good discount after the festival cause mooncake cannot be kept long. But by then, it is usually leftovers and not much selection.

auhckw wrote: Over here in Malaysia, it is also quite common to celebrate Mooncake festival. For the past month till now, you can easily find 30 to 40 booths of mooncake sellers in shopping malls. All kinds of brands and these days it comes with very nice gift box.

I like this tin box. It would make a nice presentation box to keep my home made tea cakes and cookies in.

Tin box is quite usual and is old design...

This is an example of a 2 mooncakes gift box. You can choose the types of mooncake you want. For the ones I bought, the cost for 2 mooncakes (double egg yolk) with gift box is about USD6.





Sorry couldn't show the inner side of the box, cause it is empty and mooncake is already in my stomach

This afternoon I had my first mooncake of this year (and restraining myself from the other four till the mid-autumn day!), lotus seed paste with a big boiled duck egg yolk in the center
Yeah mooncake with puerh is a great idea!

Oh, I want to add that I've been keeping pretty mooncake cases for storing tea samples and other stuff. I have the obsession of not throwing away nice boxes, tins and caddies.

The only mooncakes I like to eat are these

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucky_sunny/2574820158/

MarshalN wrote:The only mooncakes I like to eat are these

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucky_sunny/2574820158/

Never had mooncakes ... but if I did, I would surely have a bijillion of these tins, cases, etc.

Chip wrote:Never had mooncakes ... but if I did, I would surely have a bijillion of these tins, cases, etc.

Trust me, he would!!!
Just in case you didn't know, our moderator does collect tins!

Wow auhckw, that box is so cool! I love it. I think I would just buy the box alone!

Came back home, and see what my father brought home (as gift from people)









This is going to take a while to finish