It's fall, which to me means the 中秋节/Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up. Since we're going to be out of the country during the actual festival this year (Oct. 3), I convinced my family to make 月饼 (mooncakes) early instead. I've been helping make these since I was a kid, and I think I've finally mastered the whole process, start to finish. We have a few family traditions that I really like - one is the whole family assembly-lining the making of foods such as mooncakes. My family, being from the Shanghai/Jiangsu region, makes Suzhou-styled mooncakes, not the more well-known Cantonese-style commonly sold in American stores. We've traditionally made them with two different fillings - a pork filling and a red bean paste filling. In order to differentiate between them, we fold the pork ones like dumplings instead of like mooncakes. The crust is also different - it's flaky and multi-layered, kind of like puff pastry. One of my Hong Kong coworkers is immensely confused by this, but it's a recipe handed down the generations from my great-grandmother - I'm sure she's more correct about tradition than he is. :P
That being said, sorry, no recipe this time. Family secret. Also, it's complex - it takes my entire family a whole day to make. We do make them in large batches though (80 this time :O), so I have a lot sitting at home right now. We share the results among friends, so come on by and try one! And the next time you see one of these in a restaurant/bakery, know that they are also mooncakes, just as much as the Cantonese ones are.
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