A Guide to MOONCAKES!

It's almost that time of the year again, mid-autumn festival, and that means... mooncakes. So today's video will be a guide to mooncakes. Mooncake is a type of pastry eaten during the mid-autumn festival, 中秋节 zhōng qiū jiě, and the meaning behind it is 团圆 tuán yuán, which means for the entire family to gather and spend time together like a harmonious circle. Mooncakes are usually round or square and have imprints on them like auspicious words and symbols or something that represents the brand name Different regions have different types of mooncake. Most of the mooncakes we're familiar with in the West is the Cantonese style It has a glossy, thin, reddish-brown chewy crust and the filling in the mooncake varies. It can be filled with Lotus seed paste, very sweet, and also my favorite mooncake filling. Due to its high price, lotus seed paste is considered a luxury filling. Red bean paste, a very common Asian dessert filling. Jujube paste, a paste made with ripe jujube fruit. It is dark red with a smoky, fruity, and sometimes sour flavor. Five kernel, a filling that contains a blend of five types of nuts or seeds that's been coarsely chopped and held together by maltose syrup. The most common type of nuts and seeds used are walnuts, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, peanuts, sesame seeds, and almonds. The fillings that I just mentioned can be used for other types of mooncakes too. It is very common for Cantonese mooncakes to have salted egg yolk inside. The egg yolk represents the moon. The egg yolk is my absolute favorite. I always try to get the piece with the most egg yolk in it. There are a few different types of Beijing mooncakes. There's the that's a white pastry, and the that's a darker pastry with a red circle on it. Both of these mooncakes are on the drier and flakier side and use essentially the same type of filling. Like rock sugar, peach seed, melon seed, wisteria blossom, and mountain hawthorn. From afar, 自来白 and 自来红月饼 look a little bit like buns. The other type of Beijing-style mooncake is 提姜月饼 This one has a light foamy dough kind of crust, kind of like a light shortbread pastry. Unlike Cantonese-style mooncakes, this one is thicker and harder on the outside. It also has less filling than the Cantonese-style. 提姜月饼 is very aromatic because it uses sesame oil as one of the ingredients. 饭毛月饼 is also another type of Beijing mooncake. This one has many, many layers of super flaky crust. 苏州mooncake 苏式月饼 is known for its layers upon layers of flaky pastry. They come in both sweet and salty varieties. The savory ones are usually made with pork mince and is served hot. 椒盐 pepper salt flavor is a popular flavor of Suzhou mooncake. 潮汕 or 潮州 style mooncake 潮式月饼 This is another type of flaky mooncake that emphasizes on the aroma of lard after roasting. 云南style mooncake 遍式月饼 is popular in Yunnan, Guizhou, and surrounding areas. It's well-known for using ham, honey, lard, and sugar as filling. The flour crust pastry is roasted golden and it's crispy but not crumbly. 台式月饼 There are two types of Taiwanese mooncakes. One has a crust that's similar to the famous Taiwanese pineapple cakes. The other is a flaky pastry crust. Popular fillings include red bean, mung bean, and taro paste. Traditional mooncakes are very oily and each one is over 1,000 calories. Well, you're meant to share with your family and not eat the entire thing yourself. You know, sharing is caring. However, health-conscious people have invented lower-calorie mooncakes. People offer lighter fillings like pineapple, durian, taro, chocolate, coffee, and even ice cream. In Hong Kong, they invented the snow-skin mooncake 冰皮月饼 which is not baked but instead has a glutinous rice crust and that needs to be frozen. The crust itself can be infused with different flavors like chocolate and fruit. The filling is more like a dessert and is comparable to mochi ice cream. And there's even jelly mooncake 燕菜月饼 The crust is made of agar or gelatin with a variety of fruit flavorings. All right, enough talk about mooncakes. What's your favorite mooncake? Mine is the Cantonese mooncake with lotus seed paste and as many egg yolks as possible. And snow-skin mooncakes. I only tried it once and I don't remember what flavor it was but I just remembered it was delicious and it blew my mind. I'm going to try to find myself a box of snow-skin mooncake this mid-autumn festival. But remember, the most important thing about mooncake is sharing it with your family over some tea while moongazing. Have an awesome mid-autumn festival and hope you get to try some of these amazing pastries. If you like this video, please share with your friends and give it a big thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel. We have educational videos every Wednesdays and Sundays. Thanks for watching. See you later.