In this article, I am taking you on an adventure to the deeper and more flavourful roots of the name of my website, Mooncake.

Some people think I bake biscuits and cakes all day because my blog is called mooncake. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. My website is named after a memory. When I was 17, and young and carefree, I once saw a Chinese pastry sitting in a shop window on Amsterdam's Zeedijk. I was fascinated but didn't dare go inside to ask what it was. This moment symbolises my curiosity about unfamiliar food, and my blog is about all those times I did step inside somewhere to discover new food.

By now, there are many different types of mooncakes to discover, so I headed to Amazing Oriental in The Hague – Ypenburg – a huge flagship store that I'm completely crazy about. Have a look:

I didn't want to leave anymore. I think next time I'll hire a lorry or a freight train to load all my groceries into.

Break

This supermarket has definitely got a place in my heart. I must have been around 19 when I was first blown away by the product range. Years later, I persuaded a colleague to cycle up and down ‘quickly’ during our lunch break to Duivendrecht to pick up a lemper and some spekkoek from Amazing Oriental. I'd misjudged the distance somewhat. It was a 20-minute bike ride instead of five, we had a headwind, and the moment we stepped into the supermarket, nothing else mattered except what was there on the shelves. There was genuinely no stopping us and we only came back outside a few hours later. Hahaha. Our break was actually half an hour, but not this time. We didn't do it on purpose, but we were simply taken over by a higher power and therefore unaccountable for our actions. It became clear to me once again where my deep interest actually lay. Not at that office, anyway. We left the premises with far too many groceries. More than we could carry on our bikes and, naturally, we stood out far too much when we got back hours later.

Amazing Oriental Ypenburg

Back to Ypenburg. Since we're heading towards autumn – harsh but true – that also means the Moon Festival is coming up again. And so a veritable mooncake section has been set up at Oriental, featuring endless beautifully decorated boxes filled with all kinds of different shapes and sizes of mooncakes and matching lanterns:

Mid-Autumn Festival mooncakes

Mooncakes are small cakes traditionally filled with a salted duck egg yolk (which has a different flavour and is slightly richer than a chicken egg yolk) and lotus seed paste, but nowadays they come in many varieties and therefore also without that yolk.

Originally made with lard, but nowadays also increasingly with vegetable oil. Quite rich and they are really only eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, North and South Korea, Japan and Vietnam, and wherever these communities are scattered around the world. The egg yolk represents the full moon that is always in the sky when the festival takes place, and the round shape stands for family reunion. Families get together, eat together and give each other an often beautiful box of mooncakes as a gift, which are eaten after dinner with tea and fruit. Lanterns are lit and people look at the full moon together.

Family reunion

Centuries ago, the hard work of the year would come to an end towards autumn (nowadays there is no beginning or end to our work, haha). The final harvest was brought in, which was reason for a celebration. The round shape of a mooncake symbolises family reunion. And traditionally, you always save a little bit of mooncake for those who are unable to be there, as a sign of your longing for reunion. It's lovely, those subtle traditions with meaning…

Back to the mooncake section at Oriental...

Those boxes are just gorgeous, aren't they?! Just look at them:

It's like you're buying chocolates from Pierre Marcolini in Paris, or an Hermès scarf. Whether you celebrate the Moon Festival or not, isn't this wonderful to give as a gift?

I dived into this Oriental Pearl Mooncake mix – featuring six different types of mooncakes:

Look at them shining here, little works of art:

Bird's-eye view

Adorned with sights of Hong Kong…

From the inside:

The original with lotus paste and salted duck egg yolk:

My favourite below in the foreground with oolong tea... so tasty: mild and flavourful, not too sweet and you can really taste that tea!

With pine nuts, creamy and with less sugar:

Here too, you can taste the pine nuts immediately.

The variant below was completely different again. Including almond, sesame, melon seeds (egusi) and I tasted mandarin: 

 

With pieces of chestnut and red bean paste:

Those fillings are actually Hong Kong's answer to marzipan. But with natural flavours and not too much sugar.

Oh and from now on you also have frozen mooncakes in all colours of the rainbow and lava mooncakes filled with a custard ‘lava’. A sweet and comforting pastry:

Brilliant!

Yesterday another video that will get you even more in the mood:

Mooncakes are actually always in limited supply, with a rush usually starting in August. So anyone who wants the best: make sure to go early in the season. 

This is the address of the flagship store 🙂 but you have branches all over the country. You can find all locations here.