@Changye

原来我不喜欢粤菜，因为澳式粤菜不太好！  现在我喜欢。 

Hi bodawei

I also heard before that southern Chinese people are fond of eating sweet food. I guess Japanese people's love for sweets might be originated in southern China. Actually, a lot of things in Japan came from southern China in ancient times. In general, Japanese people seem to prefer 中国南方菜 to 北方菜. 

@Changye

Yes, I understand what you say about sweet food, but I would be surprised if the overall sugar consumption per capita here is less than say in my home country of Australia.  Reasons: 

1. Some regions of China do favour sweet dishes - I lived for six months with a guy from Zhejiang and he taught me to put at least a spoonful of sugar in EVERY cooked dish.  This region's cuisine does have a reputation for sweetness and it seems to be well-earned. And of course Guangdong does feature a lot of sweet food, as well as actual 'sweets' like mango pudding etc.  

2. When they do eat sweets, they are incredibly sweet - eg. things like icecreams and lollies are sweeter than I am used to.  

3. Almost all the bread baked in China has more sugar in it than we are used to in Australia.  

4. (Finally) Mid-Autumn Festival and moon cakes seem to make up for the lack of sugar at other times - the sugar even goes in the 'savoury' moon cakes.   

PS. I haven't the stomach for an argument about contaminated moon cakes!     

It seems to me that Chinese people basically don't like to eat sweet food very much, unlike Japanese, but interestingly moon cakes are often extraordinarily sweet. As far as I know, moon cakes are the sweetest food in China.

As for "healthiness" of moon cakes, I hear that most of them are "contaminated" and just don't meet national sanitary standards, and some Chinese people express understanding of other countries' concerns for Chinese moon cakes.

@Bodawei

Got it!

I was really surprised when I got to know I had made mooncakes one time more than my chinese friends (i.e. they had never done it). But then they too told me conventional ovens are rare in chinese homes.

Living in China and having a chance to eat Chinese food surely makes up for not eating mooncakes. 恭喜你！ ^_^

The mooncake episode of Dear Amber supports your assumption about landfill.

Changye

Thanks for explaining :)

Changye

Aaah. 明白了。  The 'penny drops' as we say.  I see.  Now I understand how we get so many variations in shape.  Thanks.  

@dunderklumpen

I have not considered making my own moon cakes! One excuse is that we do not have an oven - in fact a conventional oven in rare in a Chinese home. (Why bother when the duck is roasted for you just a 100 metres away?  :-)  

Other excuses include .. (1) getting gluten free flour suitable for baking is problematic - rice flour, bean flour, sweet corn flour, buckwheat etc. do not work well by them selves. In the West millers combine them in clever ways; (2) there is so much other tasty food in China I will not miss moon cakes; (3) I have a supply of moon cakes to give away - never have to buy them as gifts (in China one receives about ten times the quantity of moon cakes than can be feasibly eaten - I assume that large numbers of them go to landfill in the cause of maintaining tradition.)    

Hi bodawei

I can't exactly tell what character style the "寿" has, but probably it was written for a kind of "篆刻" (seal carving), which is one of traditional Chinese art works. "篆刻" basically employs "篆体" (seal script style), which are often freely modified/deformed to conform to the shape of a seal or for artistic purpose.

http://home.comcast.net/~ronin_engineer/AssortedSeals2.jpg

@bodawei

I read that Sweden banned the ones containing different sorts of nuts. Some bloggers think the ban comes from the banning countries wanting to protect their inland market. I don't thinks so since there is not a single mooncake-producing bakery in Sweden, as far as I know.
The ban may give an opportunity for chinese people in Sweden to learn how to make mooncakes themselves -a much more satisfactory pursuit than buying them in a store I'd say :) But I know very little about 中秋节 and mooncakes of course.

It tastes worse than it sounds

哈哈, I only had chinese mooncake one time and that was an intresting experience. I'm used to sweet cakes (flour + butter + sugar + egg = cake). The mooncake with its beans and salty egg yolks is more like food from my point of view.

Maybe you can make your own mooncakes? There is flour that doesn't contain gluten, right?

@dunderklumpen

Changye raises a good point, although it is not true that restrictions are put in place because they are not 'healthy'.  They indeed may be unhealthy (!), but that is not the reason they are prevented entry.  If that was the case, we would have difficulty getting lots of foreign food into Western countries! Australia's restrictions are essentially concerned with the risk of transmission of disease, pests, etc.  Moon cakes containing egg may not make the grade - they would look at how perishable the product or ingredient is, packaging, etc. to assess the public health risk.  

Also, the report gives the impression that ALL moon cakes are prevented entry to Western countries.  In fact, very few are prevented entry (eg. those containing egg.)  Australia receives a huge supply of moon cakes from China every year.  Large special purpose markets are established to sell them.   

Incidentally, moon cakes in China are often not to Western taste, so making your own is a good idea.  Moon cakes here often combine sweet and savoury in the same cake - very sweet and very salty ingredients together.  It tastes worse than it sounds (allegedly, I don't eat them myself because they contain gluten.)  The local delicacy here is a sweet ham moon cake.  (I do mean ham, rather than the usual pork.)   

@Changye

Precisely - you have found the characters I mean. These two are similar but the second one is symmetrical on both axes, not just one.  Sometimes these characters are written in an elongated fashion, becoming pointy at the ends, still retaining their symmetry.  Very nice.  

How do you describe these particular characters?  Not seal, not oracle? What are they?  Do you happen to know?  

你们太客气了~ They don't look as nice as the ones you buy i China but they tasted good. My Chinese friends asked if they could buy mooncakes from me next year instead of buying them from China :) I made the mooncakes with not too much sugar. Next time I'll try to reduce both the fat and the sugar a bit more. I fear the dough will become harder to handle though.

I could post the recipe if anyone is interested.

@changye
I saw Sweden banned mooncakes because of the nuts used in some of them. My guess is the producing country doesn't comply with the demands for food production, maybe using too much biocides, not paying the workers etc.

Wow dunderklumpen, that's very impressive!  They look really yummy...how'd they taste?

Hi dunderklumpen

Great job. They look very tasty. I believe your 月饼 is much more "healthy" than ones sold in the PRC.

With just one month to go until the 2009 Mid-autumn Day, Moon cakes sales are really starting to pick-up. However, according the Guangzhou Commercial Association yesterday (September 6, 2009), exports of Cantonese moon cakes continue to face a really tough challenge.

Whilst the consumption of Moon cakes in China is expected to rise by 10% compared to last year, the situation abroad is very different. Indeed, many foreign countries ban the import Chinese pork and eggs which are the main ingredients of Moon cakes.

Countries banning Chinese moon cakes include the U.S., Canada, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany, Thailand, Sweden, Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and so on.

(By Zhu Yanshan and David Keyton)

http://www.lifeofguangzhou.com/node_10/node_37/node_85/2009/09/07/125229420969344.shtml

P/S. Your moon cakes are NOT moon-shaped, hehe.

Hi bodawei

How about these ones?

http://pm.kongfz.com/detail.php?itemId=3398145

http://www.nipic.com/show/3/73/5e59d5d19bede43a.html

Here's the outcome of today's baking.

If I don't carve characters into the mold I can write them onto the mooncake instead. One mold. Different mooncakes. 懒人的做法，嘿嘿。

哇~~ 那么多好看的老子啊！

I just had dinner in the local chinese restaurant and asked about the characters. They suggested I carve 团圆 tuán​yuán in the mold. It means to have a reunion. Those two characters are not very symmetric and beautiful though... However they could be written in old style. The first one is 麻烦 though...  :(
The last one is kind'a'cool :)

  

Changye, that character looks like some of the characters on this site.

月餅蠻好吃的

滷肉豆沙口味也不錯~~

不過很油就是了~~嗯嗯~~@@

Ha ha, what have I started?  (It is not one of these either!) 

Actually this is more along the lines of what I was thinking of, Changye.  I have seen a number of variations on this and right now can't find the particular one I was after. It is lengthened, and the lines are somewhat straighter.  And it is usually drawn perfectly symmetrical.  I guess that there are many variations developed over the ages.  

Hi dunderklumpen

The character bodawei mentioned is probably an oracle bone script form of "寿" (shou4). You can see it in the webpage below. It's the fourth character in the right line. Please click the picture in the page to see larger view.

http://auction.artxun.com/paimai-15217-76080906.shtml

@dunderklumpen

寿 shòu。 But there is an ancient form of this character (can't use the keyboard to write it unfortunately) that is conveniently symmetrical - would look great.  In fact I am sure that it is used on lots of 月饼。  

大家好!

I found a recipe on wikipedia. Next problem: what characters should I carve into the mooncake mold? I'd like some traditional text. Something like Longevity.

大家好!

I have just made a mooncake-mold and I am cooking golden syrup as I type. I'm looking for a receipt to make the red bean paste. If anyone knows a good one I'd be glad to have it. Extra glad if it is a traditional one, written in chinese ^_^

Oh yes, those are the "snow" ones I was talking about!

Mooncakes are actually really fun to make, though in our family we cheat and buy the lotus paste stuff ready-made. Then you have to stretch the tiniest ball of pastry around the big ball of lotus paste. Looks like it should defy physics, but it seems to work!

I fed a mooncake to my housemates once. It didn't go down well.

bababardwan, 不客气！

gesang says：

What kind of molasses is this?

I think it's the sticky kind ;)

calkins,

thanks heaps for the video.Great to see how it's done.

cassielin,

I really liked red bean flavoured cakes when I was in Taiwan but don't think they were mooncakes.I wonder what they were?

祝大家中秋节快乐！Happy mid-fall festival!

Greetings from Guangzhou!

Wow, this seems so easy... put flour and molasses together and you have the mooncake dough? 

What kind of molasses is this?

The making of the moon cake:

Bazza, it does look like 昌門.  What does that mean?  Prosperous entry?  Prosperous opening?  Prosperous beginning?

Does the moon cake in the main picture have 昌門（昌门） written on it?

yeah, there are lots of different types! actually, they are different tastes! My favorite is 红豆沙馅的月饼.(moon cakes with red bean paste inside)

看样子，中国人非常讲究月饼！

Ha ha, I love the little pig 饼干 bǐnggān in your last photo!

these look like they have the characters on top:

green tea bean paste inside this one:

found a picture of a "snow skin mooncake" but I would also be interested if this is what Sebire is referring to.

Sebire, what are snow moon cakes?  Icing on top?

There are lots of different types. I like the ones with the eggs in the middle. Have you tried the "snow" ones? They are covered in some kind of icing. Apparently mooncakes are incredibly calorific!