The Mid-Autumn Festival is a celebration of the fall harvest and an important event on the lunar calendar. The festivities include dragon dances, glowing lanterns, incense and, perhaps the most important, eating mooncakes. These traditional pastries are usually filled with red bean or lotus seed paste and can also include a cooked yolk of duck eggs. All the top hotels sell their own versions and start taking orders at the beginning of September. But this year I stumbled upon an ad for chocolate mooncakes from dessert shop Awfully Chocolate. Needless to say, I ran to their new outlet on Wujiang Lu walking street in Jing’an to secure an order.
Their mooncakes consist of a dense and intensely rich dark chocolate torte that has been dipped in dark chocolate ganache and stuffed with a salty butterscotch “yolk.” Sold as a set of four individually packaged cakes in a nice wooden box, they are pricey little jewels, but worth every penny! The first bite was so decadent I nearly blacked out. They are really, really good – moist and outrageously chocolatey, the creamy butterscotch filling helps cut the richness of the rest of the cake. Non-chocolate lovers need not apply. I can’t wait to eat the other three!
Do you like mooncakes? Which flavor is your favorite?
I’m absolutely, positively sure I would like these. The cupcakes did look good. Mom
Oh yeah, you’d love them! We’ll go to this shop next time you’re here and see what other goodies they have.
That’s my kind of mooncake; rich and chocolately!!
Mine too! I’m forever spoiled on mooncakes now though 🙂
“The first bite was so decadent I nearly blacked out.”
LOL. Great line.
I’m actually EATING a mooncake as I’m reading this blog post. They’ve been selling them for weeks now on the streets of HCMC, but only after I mentioned to a friend that I (hint hint) hadn’t received any this year as presents, did two magically appear (one savory, one sweet). I’m totally weird, but I kind of like the salty eggs. It’s just one of those things. The Vietnamese have a salty lemon drink that I almost threw up the first time I tried it, but now I kind of like it. OMG. What has living in Vietnam DONE to me!??!!
Thanks 🙂
I know what you mean, sometimes things just grow on you. Since we’ve been living here, my tolerance for spicy food has grown by leaps and bounds. Now I actually CRAVE it! Plus I’m eating crazy things, like beef tongue and pig trotters, that I never thought I’d eat. I’m still working up to the really adventurous items 🙂