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September 25 this year is the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. That is to say, on September 25 it'll be time to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with delicious mooncakes!
The holiday's history dates back to the Xia Dynasty (2070 BC–1600 BCE), when people would gather to celebrate the full moon in honour of the mythical moon goddess Chang'e. Nowadays, people celebrate by eating pomelos and sharing mooncakes with their friends and family.
Mooncakes are small pastries filled with a dense, thick paste of lotus or sweet bean. Traditionally, they're also made with salted duck egg yolks to represent the full moon. If you're a qwai lo, you might find the yolk flavour a little overwhelming in a sugary confection. Worry not—mooncakes without yolks are easy to find. However, some mooncake connoisseurs actually custom order their cakes with up to four yolks!
Since mooncakes are a seasonal delicacy, you don't have much time left to get them. Kim Moon Bakery (438 Dundas Street West) in Chinatown is famous for their mooncakes, but there are many other Chinese bakeries downtown and in the 'burbs that will be carrying them till the moon gets big and round. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll be gifted one of these festive mooncakes from Nokia.
Photo by visualdensity.
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In Hong Kong, they sell "ice moon cakes" -- they're like ice-cream versions of moon cakes! You see people on the metro taking them home in aluminum foil, it's great.
Well, that just sounds delicious!
I admire your enthusiasm for moon cakes, but unfortunately I don't see the appeal! They get passed around during the mid-autumn festival even though the majority of people I encounter (am in china at the moment) don't actually like them and tend to try to foist them off on another unsuspecting recipient. They're the fruitcakes of China.
I think you need to get a good mooncake to appreciate the appeal. Like fruitcake, a dry and unsavoury cake is like death.
My first mooncake was served atop a pedestal at the Beijing Grand Hyatt, so you can understand how I'm a little spoiled.