Mid-Autumn 2016

Mid-Autumn Festival falls on 15 Sep this year. While the Takashimaya Mooncake Fair usually starts during the Hungry Ghost Festival, the light-up ceremony and fireworks displays for Chinatown only take place after. Was looking for above-average mooncakes in beautiful packaging and settled for Man Fu Yuan by Intercontinental Singapore – two doors with knobs open to reveal two drawers that contained two mooncakes each. I would prefer two baked mooncakes each of white lotus paste with single yolk, and low sugar white lotus paste with macadamia nuts. However, flavours could not be mixed so bought the latter. At 25% off, it was reasonably priced. Grand Hyatt stood out from the rest in that there are 9 snowskin and 4 baked flavours for you to choose from. 8 mini snowskin or 4 traditional mooncakes fit into an exquisite box and flavours include snowskin black sesame, Buddha's hand truffle mooncake and traditional baked sesame lotus double yolk with bamboo ash mooncake.

Interestingly, Sze Chuan Court by Fairmont Singapore's baked white lotus paste with single yolk and macadamia nuts mooncake as well as all snowskin flavours are neither round nor square but shaped like a peach. If you do not like lotus paste, try Peach Garden's traditional yuzu paste with orange peel, red date paste with wolfberries, pandan paste with yolk or kumquat paste mooncakes. The latter two are new flavours, just like the mini snowskin white lotus paste with pomegranate truffle mooncake. Orange peel is featured in many mooncakes including Peach Garden's snowskin white lotus paste with yuzu and orange peel mooncake and Old Seng Choong's traditional baked red bean paste with orange peel, yolk blend and pine nuts mooncake. Could smell the aroma of the latter's baked skin and its white lotus paste was not too sweet – unlike Shangri-La Hotel, Royal China at Raffles and The Ritz Carlton, Millenia Singapore. Paris Baguette has also hopped on the mooncake bandwagon.

You may also be interested in Mid-Autumn 2012 – Mooncakes Galore, Mid-Autumn 2013 – Part II, Mid-Autumn 2014 and Mid-Autumn 2015.