Moon cakes

On 10 September 2001, Maximark Supermarket in Ho Chi Minh City's District 10 displayed the largest and heaviest moon cake (weigh 735 kg, diameter 2 metre, height 0.4 metre) ever created in Vietnam. Fifty workers at the Dong Khanh Food Company made the cake to serve some 10,000 customers as well as poor and disabled children from centers managed by Ho Chi Minh City's Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Moon Cakes (Banh Trung Thu) are a sweet specialty found throughout Vietnam in mid-autumn. If a cake is perfectly made, one can finish the entire treat without feeling bloated. If not, then even one slice can seem too much. The recipe determines how delicious, rich of soft a cake is and how long it will last without spoiling.

Varied tastes, old and new

According to the manager of the Long Xuong Bakery in District 5 of Ho Chi Minh City, the first moon cakes in Ho Chi Minh City were made by Chinese people living around Cho Lon (Big Market). A traditional Chinese moon cake should taste sweet and fatty and should smell of therapeutic herbs. Some experienced bakes make the filling of these cakes with Chinese dried sausage, roast lean pork and fish fins, mixing the ingredients with herbs and spices, especially dried ginger, in a special formula that offers both salty and sweet tastes.

Moon cakes made in the north of Vietnam are also sweet but less rich than those from the south. Their fillings often smell of lemon leaves and madarin-orange and grapefruit peels. Deo (soft) moon cakes made in Hanoi are especially delicious. The fragrance of grapefruit flowers emerges as soon as you bite into the coating of sticky-rice paste.

Some moon-cake producers-such as Kinh Do, Dong Khanh, Ai Hue, Hy Lam Mon, in Ho Chi Minh City - also add mixtures of coconut and milk, taro root and milk, durian, green bean and cocoa of hazelnuts. A few local bakers add whisky to give their cakes' Ho Chi Minh City even makes diet moon cakes that are cholesterol-free and taste less sweet.

Other cakes bear influences from beyond Vietnam. The Equatorial Hotel makes Malaysian-style cakes from red beans and sesame oil, or lotus seeds and sweet-smelling leaves with a coating of chocolate. Hong Kong's Saint Honore cakes also come in many flavours, including soybeans with orange flavour, white lotus, black beans, lotus seeds with tea.

Most moon cakes are either round of square. However, some are shaped like pigs of fish.

Best time to eat moon cakes

Traditionally, a moon cakes in served three days after baking so that the oil in the filling can seep into the coating, making it soft and creating a delicious, rich taste. Newly baked cakes tend to be dry and hard. Today, however, according to Luu Lap Chanh, owner of Hy Lam Mon Bakery in Ho Chi Minh City, modern technology and new recipes allow the oil to seep into the coating in just twelve hours, although this makes the cakes less tasty than the traditional three-day method.

Packed with sugar and calories

Moon cakes.

According to the Kinh Do Confectionery Company in Ho Chi Minh City, a 200-gram cake filled with green beans contains as many as 700 kilocalories, whereas an adult needs about 2,000 kilocalories a day for basic health. A moon cake has all the ingredients for putting on weight: starch, fat and sugar. Sugar accounts for between 40 and 60% of a cake's weight. Thus, an average 200-gram cake may contain more than 100 grams of sugar. Cakes that are high in sugar, roast pork, fatty meat and oily filling provide even more calories.

Keeping your cakes

Moon cakes kept in normal weather condition can last fifteen days. Some vacuum-packed cakes, those packed in airtight boxes with humidity of oxygen absorbers and those treated with ultraviolet rays may last longer, but they still should be eaten within one month. Consumers should be careful about cakes that are kept in normal conditions yet seem to last several months as the producer may have used an anti-mould agent, which is believed to be harmful to health.