Moon Cake (or Mon Cake) Recipe: Traditional Cuisine in Mid-Autumn Festival

Moon cake or Mon cake is one of the typical flavors indispensable in the Vietnamese tray in the eighth month of the lunar calendar. The whole family gathering, enjoying the fragrant cakes is a beautiful image of every full moon occasion. To make this Mid-Autumn Festival meaningful and memorable, let’s explore how to make delicious mooncake recipes traditional for your loved ones in your family.

What are moon cakes?

What is a moon cake? Mon cake is one of the cakes that are made and used a lot in the Mid-Autumn Festival. Cakes originate from Chinese cuisine, but in the long history of cultural interference, influence and acculturation, have spread and are popularized in many other Asian countries.

In Vietnam, the baked mon cake is a cake with a crust made of wheat flour baked in a dark golden brown in the oven, one of the two indispensable cakes on the occasion of breaking the moon on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. whose shell is made from glutinous rice flour, which has a more Vietnamese nuance, is identified with the name plastic cake.

In Vietnam, mooncake recipes traditional are usually filled with mung beans (or lotus seeds) or mixed (with ham, sausage, lemon leaves, pumpkin jam, sugar fat, etc.). Cake boxes usually include two types of cakes, sticky rice cakes, and on the occasion of breaking the moon, two types of cakes are brought out to eat together, besides other foods such as nuggets (and banana peppers, quail eggs), persimmon, grapefruit.

After the baking process, the mooncake recipes traditional are cooled and covered with cellophane, placed in cake boxes in pairs of 2 or 4 pieces, and it is very common to pair or bake cakes with sticky rice cakes (indicating the harmony of heaven and earth), or according to the form and decorative motifs (square cake-circle cake), or according to the type of filling (mixed cake-mung bean cake). Cakes are stored at room temperature for the shelf life specified by each manufacturer.

In addition, the people of Japan, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia also eat mooncakes every full moon in the 8th month of the lunar calendar, but each country’s cakes will have its characteristics in form and taste.

Why make mooncakes at home?

• The first benefit of making mooncakes by hand is that you know for sure the source of the ingredients you choose to ensure food safety and hygiene.
• When you make your own cake, you can adjust the sweetness to your liking. Less sweet, less greasy and can omit ingredients that do not suit the family’s taste. 
• Ensure a batch of cakes that are delicious, nutritious, and healthy because no preservatives and food additives are used.
• When making mon cakes at home, you can unleash your creativity, change the cake according to your favorite flavors and colors, as well as adjust it to suit the preferences of each family member.
• In the midst of countless boxes of mon cakes packed in modern and eye-catching packaging, a rustic cake with its own color prepared by you painstakingly from raw materials to the moment the batch comes out of the oven will be a gift that contains a lot of enthusiasm, hard work, and sincere love.

This will be a great cake to show love for relatives and friends on this special occasion.

How to make mon cake at home?

Most popular mooncake flavors

Bánh nướng

• Traditional mixed moon cake

Traditional mixed mon cake usually has two parts: the crust and the filling. The crust is made from flour, baking powder, sugar water, and cooking oil. The mixed filling is a combination of a number of ingredients such as sausage, bare skin, nuts, pumpkin jam, sugar fat, lotus seeds, sesame, cotton rub, and char siu meat, …

Currently, mixed baked mooncakes are also produced with a variety of fillings with ingredients containing expensive foods such as abalone, and fish fins, … to meet the diverse needs of users.

• Roasted chicken moon cake

Similar to the traditional mixed mon cake, this moon cake has a savory filling made from chicken breast marinated in spices, then rimmed and shredded instead of cotton and char siu meat.

In particular, the baked chicken moon cake also has lemon leaves, which makes the mon cake a characteristic aroma, when eaten, it feels very tasty and delicious.

• Green bean moon cake

With less fat content than mixed fillings, Mid-Autumn Festival cakes with mung bean paste are also popular for their pleasant sweet, and savory taste.

The mung bean paste of the moon cake is made from solid mung beans with sugar, and flour and accompanied by salted eggs. This cake will be a perfect mon cake when you enjoy it with hot cups of tea in the chilly autumn air.

• Moon cake filled with lotus seeds

Mooncakes with lotus seeds are usually filled with lotus seeds and mung bean puree that are combined to increase the sweetness and sweetness of the cake. This is the type of moon cake that many people choose for relatives and families because of its high nutrition (from lotus seeds) and less fat content than mixed cakes.

• Green tea moon cake

Mooncakes filled with green tea are one of the “hot” cakes recently with a typical taste from Japanese matcha powder, the slight bitterness also helps to balance the deliciousness of moon cakes. makes you less bored when eating.

Ingredients for the filling include almonds (or walnuts), matcha powder, and salted eggs. In addition, people also use black tea powder or jasmine tea to make the filling.

• Tiramisu moon cake

Tiramisu is known as a traditional mon cake with the meaning of honoring motherhood in Italian culture. The idea of ​​combining two Asian and Western cuisines has created Tiramisu moon cakes with fillings made from chickpeas, cream cheese, cocoa powder, or coffee completely new and attractive.

• Dried fruit pies

This is also a popular new type of moon cake filling in recent years because people’s demand for cakes with healthy ingredients has increased.

The nuts commonly used to make the filling are almonds, macadamia nuts, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds, along with dried fruits such as raisins, raisins, etc., which are combined and processed in one way. delicate way, creating a harmonious, delicious whole that brings a fleshy taste mixed with a sweet taste to create a full-flavored cake without much fat, which is not good for health.

• Black sesame moon cake

Like other baked goods, mooncakes filled with black sesame also have a glossy brown crust, soft and sweet, but hidden inside this cake is a black sesame filling that is smooth and soft with a strong aroma of black sesame and a very strong fleshy taste. taste roll.

In addition, a round golden salted egg is indispensable in the middle of the black sesame filling like a beautiful full moon night. This highlight not only makes the cake more delicious but also has a lot of meaning.

• Black garlic pies

Black garlic moon cake has a shell made from pureed black garlic, which is flexible and soft. The filling consists of selected black garlic cloves, combined with black beans, green beans, mixed, roasted chicken, fish fins, etc. The black garlic ingredient of the cake is medicine so it is very good for health, and suitable for cooking. gifts for grandparents and parents.

• Salted egg lava mon cake

Although “late birth”, every recent Mid-Autumn Festival, salted egg lava cake is very popular with many people to buy as a gift or cook it with their family to enjoy.

The cute little cakes are mouth-watering with moist, soft, and sweet crust and a layer of fragrant golden salted egg filling, which melts in the mouth, making anyone easily fall in love from the first bite.

• Moon cake with milk tea

For milk tea lovers, mooncakes with the familiar fatty milk tea filling will be a great choice for the Mid-Autumn Festival. This type of cake usually has a traditional cake crust, while the filling will have a milk tea flavor.

You can buy this cake to treat young people at home, who often love milk tea. Or if the whole family wants to change the taste of the cake, you can also try it, it will be very new for sure.

Snow skin mooncake

• Traditional green bean paste snow skin Mon cake

The soft cake is characterized by the smell of finely ground roasted glutinous rice flour, sugar water, and passionate grapefruit perfume. The soft, flexible shell wraps the traditional green bean paste carefully, when biting, you can feel the sweetness spreading throughout the mouth while being soft and very pleasant.

There’s nothing better than preparing a pot of hot tea and sipping green bean paste cakes with the whole family on this Reunification Day.

• Mixed snow skin Mon cake

If the cake has a mixed filling, then the cake is flexible, how can it not be the “representative” of this name?

Mixed sticky rice cake is a diverse combination of many ingredients with different salty and sweet flavors. The first is the soft and sweet crust wrapped around the filling including pumpkin jam, orange marmalade, sugar fat to chicken, cotton balls, sausages, and char siu, … Indispensable are pumpkin seeds, melon seeds, and sesame seeds.

Jelly cake

Different from the traditional moon cake with the crust made from flour mixed with sugar water, the jelly moon cake has a cool jelly crust.

This type of cake is both easy to eat and extremely easy to make, without too much time and special kitchen tools. You can also make a jelly mooncake at home with different kinds of fillings according to your preferences such as flan, green tea, green beans, and durian,… with a very simple process.

Modern cakes

• Fresh mon cake

Fresh moon cake is a new processing method for moon cakes, this type of cake is usually made by hand and sold immediately after 1-2 days, with few additives, so it has a shelf life of 5 – 2 days. 7 days.

However, this type of cake still ensures the variety of the filling as well as the shape of the cake. Salty fillings such as those mixed with roasted chicken, char siu, or sweet fillings such as green beans, red beans, and taro, … are also available.

• Floating flower mon cake

Floating flower moon cake is a cake that will make you admire at first sight with its colorful and colorful cake crust decorated with extremely impressive and sophisticated 3D.

The filling is usually sweet with popular fillings such as green beans, lotus seeds, red beans, etc., making this moon cake not only enchanting but also very easy to eat, satisfying the taste of the people. many people.

• Baked bamboo charcoal powder moon cake

This type of cake has the same recipe as regular cakes, only special in that it has additional ingredients of healthy bamboo charcoal powder. The filling of the cake will usually be a familiar filling such as salted eggs, lotus seeds, green beans, etc.

Bamboo charcoal moon cake may not be too special in taste. However, when eaten with the filling, the crust is delicious in a very different way, less sweet but still attractive.

• Taiwan thousand layers mon cake

This type of moon cake has many layers of cake, and when eaten, it is crispy. The filling of the mochi cake is fragrant, fatty, and salty, and the egg is slightly sweet, creating a strange and delicious feeling for the cake. If you want to try a change of taste for the Mid-Autumn Festival, this will be a good choice!

Tips for making tasty moon cake

How to make the sugar-water mixture?

• Not only sugar and water, but the sugar water of mon cakes must also have lemon juice or pineapple and be cooked for many hours to have a beautiful color.
• Additionally, the sugar water must be of a reasonable thickness and consistency; if it is either too thick or too watery, the cake will become pasty and lose its appeal.
• Typically, sugar water will be a blend of white sugar and brown sugar, giving the cake a lovely and uniform hue.
• Whether it’s pies, sticky rice cakes, or other mon cakes, the preparation of sugar water is equally important for the finished cake to be as delicious and beautiful as you want it to be!

How to slug mung beans?

• When you conduct slugs with mung beans, red beans, taro, lotus seeds, etc., you need to make sure that the beans and seeds have been boiled or steamed to avoid being stiff and hard when eating.
• Before boiling beans, some beans need to be pre-soaked with filtered water or boiled water with 500g of sugar for 2-3 hours to make the beans taste sweet.
• You should slug the filling on medium heat so that the filling does not separate from the water and does not dry out. The drier and smoother the kernel, the longer the shelf life will be. In addition, slug filling with a little coconut oil will make the filling even more delicious!
• The delicious standard kernel has a flexible, fragrant, smooth structure that does not stick to the hand and does not melt.

How to choose tasty and fresh mung beans?

• Color: Delicious mung beans are usually green, with freshness. Avoid buying beans that are discolored – this is a sign of damaged, moldy mung beans.
• Shape: Good-quality mung beans will usually have an oval shape, rounded ends, and a smooth finish. Beans that show signs of deformation or distortion may be due to immature harvesting and the drying process that causes the beans to lose water.
• Natural aroma: Tips to choose good and quality mung beans must have a natural aroma. The beans that retain their natural aroma are those that are safely produced and stored properly.

What to combine mon cakes with?

On average, a mooncake contains 790 calories, 5 times more than a bowl of rice. For those who are not in the habit of vigorous exercise or daily exercise, this is a big challenge. Experts have come up with some simple methods to enjoy mooncakes and still manage your weight.

Serve with green tea or mint tea

Green tea and mint tea can help speed up the metabolism of sugar and reduce the sweet taste, which is very suitable for eating mon cakes. However, experts say that you should only drink warm tea (water temperature below 70 degrees Celsius) so as not to destroy the amount of vitamin C and catechin acid present in the tea leaves.

Served with red wine

In addition to the traditional ways of eating, red wine is also a suitable “half” for moon cakes. Red wine can reduce the greasy taste of the cake and also aid in digestion.

Moon cake for breakfast

Because of the high-calorie content, experts encourage families to use mooncakes for breakfast. This is the time when the human body needs the most energy overnight. Moon cake served with milk or soy milk, fruit is a suitable choice for the coming days.

Portion control

Mooncakes promise a high amount of sugar and cooking oil. According to research, every 100g of cake can provide about 20% of the energy that an adult consumes during the day. Therefore, if you do not want to gain weight, experts recommend not eating more than 100g of mooncakes a day.

How to make moon cakes? Above are the shares of Tasty Touch about the secret to making delicious and nutritious mon cake. Good luck to you!

FAQ

What is inside a moon cake?

Sweet bean paste, lotus seed paste, or red date (jujube) paste are common sweet fillings that encase one or more miniature salted and cured duck egg yolks. Ham, Chinese sausage, roast pork, and radish are a few common savory fillings. Dried fruit and mixed nuts are another classic filler.

What do mooncakes taste like?

Usually, they contain sweet pastes, like red bean paste, which has a creamy texture and a sweet, earthy flavor. The primary flavors of mooncakes are sweet or salty. The pastry is sweet and has an exterior crust that is crumbly. Mooncakes can taste like nuts, coconut, custard, bean paste, etc., depending on the filling.

Is mooncake good for health?

Mooncakes come in a variety of shapes and flavors, but they all have one thing in common: they often include high levels of calories, carbohydrates, and fats. They also contain very little protein, fiber, or vitamins, all of which are crucial elements of a healthy diet. Our bodies are overloaded with mooncakes, yet they are not very nutritious.

Why is it called a mooncake?

From moon +‎ cake, a calque of Mandarin 月餅 (yuèbíng, “mooncake”), from 月 (yuè, “moon”) + 餅 (bíng, “pastry; biscuit, cookie”), probably because the pastry’s traditional round shape resembles the full moon visible during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

When should you eat mooncakes?

Consuming mooncakes is a long-standing custom.

Every year, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, which falls on September 10 this year, mooncakes are eaten.