Mooncake Festival: Durian, Disney, ice cream, many ways to enjoy

CAINTA, Philippines — While mooncakes began as a simple celebration food to mark the annual Mid-Autumn Festival, also known today as Mooncake Festival, they have evolved through the years into many different forms.

Not only have they become available in mini, almost bite-sized gourmet wonders. They have also transformed into various flavors and forms, some of which you would not have thought possible, so that the possibilities and creative probabilities are now endless.

Here are some of the contemporary options available in the market today:

Durian, lava custard, and Disney-designed

Hong Kong MX introduces its new Musang King Durian Molten Mooncake, which has a really creamy durian filling. Each MX Durian Mooncake is filled with 100% Musang King Durian pulp from naturally ripened fruits from Malaysia chosen for their rich flavor and silky texture.

The brand also celebrates Disney’s 100th anniversary by making available MX White Lotus Seed Paste Mooncake with Egg Yolk whose crust is embedded with the Mickey Mouse logo and packages it in an exclusive Disney-designed vintage vinyl record player mooncake gift box. And the music box actually works!, as it plays the instantly recognizable melody of “It’s a Small World.”

Still available is Hong Kong MX’s pioneering Lava Custard Mooncake, which now also comes in Lava Caramel Macchiato Mooncake, Lava Chocolate Mooncake, and Lava Cheese Mooncake options.

Premium mooncakes with double egg yolk

Marco Polo Ortigas Manila is all set to celebrate the annual Mid-Autumn Festival, a widely celebrated occasion that aims to bring prosperity, harmony, and good fortune. Paying tribute to its Hong Kong roots, the hotel’s award-winning Cantonese restaurant, Lung Hin, is offering a delightful selection of premium mooncakes, with double egg yolk as its gold standard.

These premium mooncakes come in four indulgent flavors: Red Bean with Double Egg Yolk, White Lotus with Double Egg Yolk, Red Lotus with Double Egg Yolk, and Mixed Nuts Flavors, beautifully packaged in auspicious boxes.

Tea, fruit yogurt, and Chinese ham mooncakes

Once again, Kee Wah Bakery Philippines has made its supreme mooncakes available in Manila for a limited time. Made with high-quality lotus seed paste, peanut oil and top-grade salted egg yolks, these include White Lotus Seed Paste Mooncake with Two Yolks and Golden Lotus Seed Paste Mooncake as well as their mini versions. Plus Red Bean Paste Mooncake, Red Bean Paste Mooncake with 2 Egg Yolks, and Assorted Nuts Mooncake. A contemporary version of a classic is the Red Bean Paste Mooncake with Mandarin Peel, which also has a mini version.

Assorted Nuts Mooncake, Chocolate and Egg Custard Mooncake, Earl Grey Tea and Egg Custard Mooncake, Fruit Yogurt Custard Mooncake with strawberry and orange peel variants, Chinese Ham with Assorted Nuts Mooncake, and Chinese Ham with Assorted Nuts and Betty’s XO Sauce are even more unique and worth a try.

Made by Chef Nathaniel Uy

Very different from store-bought mooncakes are the gourmet mooncakes made by Chef Nathaniel Uy of TheHungryChef. Yes, he has the classic Lotus Paste Mooncake and even the Black Bean Mooncake that older generations love. But he also has really cool modern flavors, such as Ube Mooncake, Ghirardeli Cranberries Mooncake, Coffee Mooncake, and Empress Mooncake (which is an XO filled lotus mooncake). He makes them during this mooncake season and accepts orders through his Instagram account (@thehungrychef).

Chef Nat grew up eating mooncakes, as with every other Chinoy family and, as he puts it, “it is always a challenge for us chefs to recreate these dishes that will convey our emotional connection to certain types of food and identify us with what brings us joy.” So he took up the challenge and made his own mooncakes. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Mooncake in ice cream form

Mooncake ice cream? Yes. Chef Nathaniel Uy is so identified with mooncakes that when Karabella Dairy’s mother-and-son team of Jan and Ericjan ‘EJ’ Buenaflor thought of making mooncake gelato, only Chef Nat’s merited their attention and met their standards. So the collaboration between Karabella and TheHungryChef happened, and two mooncake gelatos (made with exquisite carabao’s milk) came to be — Matcha Red Bean Mooncake Gelato and Salted Egg Caramel Ube Mooncake Gelato.

Gelato master EJ Buenaflor created the gelato bases for both variants and made several runs in small batches to see how they complemented Chef Nat’s mooncakes. They tasted each batch and made certain adjustments until they hit the perfect formula.

“We wanted to balance the flavors. We didn’t want to overpower the real flavor of Chef Nat’s mooncakes. We didn’t want to make a flavor either that would taste as if we just topped the gelato with the mooncake,” explained EJ.

Karabella sells the two mooncake gelatos online in a package of one pint Matcha Red Bean Mooncake Gelato, one pint Salted Egg Caramel Ube Mooncake Gelato, and two TheHungryChef mooncakes at P1,500.