Mid-Autumn Festival

It is time again. Mooncakes period! I have never really been a big fan of mooncakes as I find it very sweet. When young, the highlight for the Mid-Autumn Festival is really the lanterns. Carrying the lanterns around - maybe the fascination with lanterns (besides the pretty designs and colors) is the fact that we can play with fire. Lol. This is the time when we can light the candles and thus play with fire/matches/lighter. We used to place candles all around the front yard or at the back. And we will "cook" - leaves, limes or whatever we can pluck off from the plants :p

The most "yuckness" was when one of the neighborhood guys "cooked" a dead (?) cockroach over the tin bottle cap. I didn't stay long enough to really discover since I ran off when I found out he was grilling the roach. I dislike roaches with a vengeance.

Those were the days when we were still staying at the old place. I don't recall playing much with lanterns once we moved to the our current place when I was 10. So the festival will come and go, without much thought on my part. But I did buy some mooncakes when in Canada (though it was never finished).

Then through reading some forums in 2004, I discovered there are so many types of mooncakes around. My dad usually gets the traditional baked mooncakes with lotus paste and yolks and occasionally there will be a snowskin version. So my mooncake horizon was broadened...I got to know that there are other versions around - yam paste, durian paste, green tea, champagne truffle, chocolate ganache and many more. It was mind-boggling!

I definitely went crazy in 2004, buying so many types of mooncakes. Lol. I bought a box of the yam paste pastry mooncake from Crown Prince Hotel (alas, no longer around now) - very delicious that my sister asked me to get for her too, a box of durian paste snowskin mooncake from Marriot Hotel, green tea snowskin mooncake from Li Bai (Sheraton Towers Hotel), and some other mooncakes from Taka basement. That was the first time I had so much mooncakes. Besides that we also had the traditional mooncakes.

Luckily in 2005, I was more controlled and only bought the yam mooncakes from Crown Prince. But then we received many mooncakes at work. The suppliers all sent us mooncakes and that was the first time I got to try the champagne truffle mooncake from either Raffles Hotel or Raffles the Plaza.

For this year, I am targeting to get only Starbucks mooncakes and from Raffles The Plaza. Only snowskin as I much prefer that.