Moon Cake

"Whishing you have beautiful Every days 

and a lifetime of happiness together."

John brought this box of Chinese pastries home from work on his birthday-- a gift from his friends Bonnie and Kimny.  The cakes are beautiful and the packaging is pretty fancy, since moon cakes are traditionally given to clients, relatives and friends during the important Mid-Autumn Festival.

The Moon Goddess

Here's the charming and perplexing English translation off the box lid (and I'm not making this up.)

The Mid-Autumn eats the moon cake. The moon cake can be used as the name and the Mid-Autumn of a kind of food to appreciate the month contact together, these in the old matter of the south Sung. Since Ming dynasty, the relevant Mid-Autumn appreciate the month to eat the recording of the moon cake the more and manufacture a round flat cake to present every Mid-Autumn, common peoples all. The size does not wait, shout to "moon cake." Market store moon cake that sell, make much the son, with fruits strange appearance, the moon cake want worth several hundred money. 

Humm...There's an article in Wikipedia to the rescue for us common peoples all, where I learned about moon cakes as a symbolic Asian food. The crust is usually made with lard, and inside there's a thick filling of bean paste (or other things) along with yolks from salted duck eggs. Very few people make moon cakes at home, because it's so labor intensive and there are many regional variations. Each moon cake has approximately 1000 calories!  They aren't gobbled down whole, but served in small wedges with tea.  Of course, non-traditional, fat free moon cakes have also appeared on the market. 

This is the traditional one. Each moon cake is wrapped individually with a little "food preservative" packet inside. That fancy imprint on top is the Chinese characters for "longevity" along with the name of the bakery.

And the moment of truth. What do they taste like?  Well, that particular combination of flavor (the paste is sweet, the egg yolk very salty) is common in Asian food, and more unusual in American sweets.  Although how about a bowl of ice cream with pretzel sticks? And what's more trendy right now than salted chocolate and caramels?  Thanks, ladies, for the tasty and interesting treat!