Mooncakes & Their Dialects

With the Mid-Autumn Festival around the corner, you’ve probably seen mooncakes popping up on shelves and on the internet. The most common kind of mooncakes are the traditional Cantonese baked mooncakes, but did you know that there are actually up to 6 types of mooncakes, each from a different dialect?

Hainanese Mooncakes

Image from The Straits Times

The most interesting thing about Hainanese mooncakes is that they’re nutty and slightly spicy. They consist of stuffing of dried tangerine, salt, and pepper sprinkled with melon and sesame seeds and the mooncake skin is thin but not flaky. With a blend of sweet and a little savoury, it sure sounds pretty interesting to me!

Hokkien Mooncakes

Image from Her World

Hokkien Mooncakes are said to be for those who sat for the imperial examinations in the past and are more commonly deemed for good luck. They’re filled with a dry and sweet filling made from candied winter melon, tangerine peel, melon seeds, sugar, lard and topped with sesame seeds coated on one side of the pastry.

Hakka Mooncakes

Image from Guide Michelin

Probably the most interesting looking mooncake, Hakka Mooncakes are made with cooked glutinous rice flour and sugar, giving its signature snow-white colour with a powdery feel when you bite into it. It is also adorned with carvings of animals and flowers, which makes it so beautiful and majestic looking. This is probably because Hakka mooncakes are sometimes offered to the moon as worship and can also be given to friends and family during the Mid-Autumn festival.

Shanghainese Mooncakes

Image from The Woks of Life

Thicker, crumbly, and buttery, the Shanghainese mooncakes are shortcrust pastries stuffed with either lotus paste or red bean paste wrapped with salted duck egg yolk. They’re commonly shaped like mini golf balls but some variants can resemble the shape of a mouse.

Cantonese Mooncakes

Definitely the most common kind of mooncakes in Singapore, these mooncakes originated from Guangdong, China. They’re golden-brown pastries filled with lotus, red bean, or salted duck egg yolks and are glazed with egg yolks before being baked.

Looking for some traditional Cantonese mooncakes to impress your loved ones? Get them here from The Plattering Co: https://www.foodline.sg/d/22723

Teochew Mooncakes

It’s easy to spot a Teochew mooncake, as they consist of yam filling with flaky skin, something that is actually quite uncommon and unique looking. Lard or pork oil is mixed with flour to make the pastry and the filling can include lotus seeds, mung bean, and yam paste. Another variant if Teochew mooncakes is a spiral-shaped flaky pastry crust with a filling of yam paste and salted duck egg yolk.

If you want to get your hands on some traditional Teochew mooncakes, SingaporeFlorist.sg do offer some here: https://www.foodline.sg/d/22397

For a full list of mooncakes, check out our link here: https://www.foodline.sg/mid-autumn/