[image]
[title]Mooncake Festival is upon us, but like many other events in Melbourne is being done differently this year.
Mid-Autumn Festival, otherwise known as the Mooncake Festival or Lantern Festival, is traditionally celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth Chinese lunar calendar month. This year, it starts on Tuesday, September 21.
Emperors used it as a way to celebrate the year's harvest and would feast and make offerings to the moon goddess. Mooncakes, which are traditionally eaten at the time, are round, dense little cakes that represent the fullness of the moon. They would usually contain a single salted duck egg yolk in the centre to further symbolise the moon.
Nowadays, Mooncake Festival provides families with the opportunity to reunite and celebrate together, eating mooncakes and lighting lanterns. But this year’s festival is different for Melburnians in lockdown.
“When I was young, my dad used to make us a lantern which looked like a dragon," says Er Rin Tan, owner of Amour Desserts, a home-based bakery that specialises in Asian desserts. "He made the outline with wires, covered it with cellophane and inside we would light a candle. We would then walk around the neighbourhood with it. It was very, very fun.
"Those memories are what we hold onto that we don’t get nowadays. Not many people light lanterns up anymore, and instead the focus is on food, so people eat mooncakes.”
Of course, this year, families have to enjoy the mooncakes in their own homes, rather than being able to gather. So Tan is using Amour Desserts is a way to connect with her community.
“Since moving here I feel there’s so many things I’m missing out on that I can do back in Malaysia. My main mission is to bake what I love to eat because I can’t get it here, and to spread love through my cakes,” says Tan.
The Malaysia-born chef started experimenting with various mooncake flavours last year, and her sweet and spicy sambal take on the classic dessert has been a raging success. “We grind shrimp, lemongrass, chilli, onion and garlic into a paste and cook it over the stove for a while until it turns aromatic, then we mix it in with lotus paste, which is slightly sweet. The spiciness of the shrimp paste blends together and gives it a sweet, spicy flavour.”
“People love it when there are different flavours and textures that come together in the mooncake,” Tan says.
You can also find classic flavours like lotus paste and red bean at Amour Desserts, but it’s the bakery's Taiwanese 3Q Mooncake that she recommends. “It’s made with our less sweet red bean paste, salted egg, and pork floss, and wrapped in a flaky outer crust. It’s a very unique and scrumptious mooncake.”
Mid-Autumn Festival will take place on September 21 this year and you can place your order for contactless delivery with Amour Desserts here.