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Chinese Moon Cakes Tea

Soon, the mid-autumn moon will shine biggest and brightest, and Chinese allover the world will bask in its glow and take it as another opportunity tofeast. Pauline D. Loh and the China Daily Sundayteam share their pick of the best mooncakes.

The lotus paste should be so silky it melts in the mouth like soft, sweetbutter, with an indulgent mouth-feel that can only come from the best Hunanlotus nuts. The pastry skin must be paper-thin, but delicately covering the cakecompletely so you do not see unseemly patches of naked filling.

The egg yolk inside should be a pale orange the color of the rising moon, andit should be seeping out just a little oil, moistening the lotus paste as theknife surgically slices the cake into six perfect wedges.

In the pastry of our dreams, every wedge should have a cross-section of yolkso the little cakes live up to their name.

For such attention to detail and perfection, you have to go south, to Hong Kong, where arguably the best mooncakes are made.Although mooncakes are shipped and sent all over the country, no one makes themlike the Hong Kong pastry maestros.

You have the award-winning custard mooncakes from the Langham Hotel HongKong, where the tiny pastries are cranked up the ladder of sophistication,combining sifted salted egg yolks, fine bean puree and a delicate skin.

But the common man's favorite must still be Maxim's - available at everymetro station in Hong Kong and where vouchers for next year's mooncakes startselling even before the crumb's from this year's pastries have been wipedoff.

Yep, these vouchers are sold in a sort of tontine system that's been used forso long it's become a part of the household budget.

So are the southern moons better, brighter and sweeter?

Well, it's all about tradition and practice. They've just been doing it a lotlonger.

In the austere years before an open economy helped the Chinese mainland catchup with the world, the selling and buying of mooncakes during the Mid-AutumnFestival was not a priority. But in the 30 years since, the market has taken aGreat Leap Forward.

In fact, it sort of got away, once unfettered.

Mooncake gifts during the season became so extravagantly packaged that itraised Forbidden City eyebrows.

The mooncakes are not so ostentatiously boxednow, but the country's couriers are still currently rushing to deliver stacks toclients, friends, family ... and media.

Many of us still remember the urban legend of the single mooncake in a gildedbirdcage when the mooncake cost about 18 yuan ($2.80) and the birdcagereportedly cost 88,888 yuan. There were no details as to what flavor themooncake was.

Fortunately, that sort of over-the-top opulence has since been tempered witha little taste. And talking of taste, you can just about get any flavor thesedays, much to the chagrin of those (like me) who think a mooncake should stillbe made of lotus or red bean paste, with just a few variations in-between.

For this feature, we sampled cranberry and red wine, corn and water chestnut,mocha and chestnuts, red bean and mochi (glutinous rice ball), candied wintermelon and peanuts, spicy melon seeds, walnuts and ham, Yunnan ham and rose petaljam, jujube paste and walnuts, macadamia nuts and coffee, oolong tea, green tea,red tea ... and some other combinations we prefer to forget.

In short, anything that will stick in a paste has been stuck in the paste. Weeven have a bakery chain touting its French mooncakes, all baked like tarts.Like the old salty dog would say, there's no tart like a

In the modern compulsive, obsessive need for innovation, and the everydaymotto of "let's be different", perhaps it would do good to remember that sometraditions are best left untouched. Improved upon, maybe, but in stillrecognizable forms.

We'll let the pictures do the talking as we take you through some of the moredelicious flavors we discovered. You can use our mooncake buying guide forreference.

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