It's time for the August Moon Festival!!

Cake hour is still going strong...just getting to blog about it gets a little behind. Today was the festival of the August Moon.  That is what is called in Western Culture.  It is a holiday of the far East including China, Taiwan, Vietnam etc.  There is referred to as the mid-autumn festival.  You might think they would call it the end of Summer festival because that is when it takes place not in the middle of autumn.  But, whatever!  It is sometimes called the mooncake festival because it is when traditional mooncakes are served up. For the uninitiated these are pastry shells filled with sweetened bean or other fruit paste.  It is like eating a pie crust with some thick pie filling.

Nicely packaged!

Chinese Specialty made in the good old USA!

And lots of packaging!!

Nice looking set of moon cakes!

 The ones we had today were from a Taiwanese company with a subsidiary in California.  Authentic Chinafornese as it were.  They came in a nicely decorated box that was typically over packaged.  Did they really need a hard plastic box inside the main box?  These were relatively small in comparison to others we have tried. One thing we liked about them was that the Chinese characters created within the pastry part on top apparently identified what the filling was.  This was a very clever and decorative way to let you know. If you were unsure of what was inside and if you liked it, you did not have to stick a probe in the bottom in the hopes of finding out what you are getting like some people do with filled chocolates. The fillings included black bean, date and pineapple - or we think one of them was pineapple.

Chinese characters in pastry are a neat touch!

Could be date, black bean or pineapple.

These tasted good. They are never very sweet but can sometimes be a little on the dry side. That was not the case with these.  Typically they go well with coffee or tea and these certainly did.  We were glad to be able to have another cultural event and celebrate with our Chinese colleagues.  Happy August Moon!

And this is typical filling. All in all they are like fig newtons!