The pastries, about the size of a palm and filled with a sweet paste, are popular gifts during the ancient festival.

As autumn approaches in many parts of Asia, that means one thing: boxes and boxes of mooncakes.

The small pastries are synonymous with the Mid-Autumn Festival and are handed out in colourful boxes to friends and colleagues.

It is not uncommon to see boxes stacked around offices at this time of year or long queues outside popular bakeries. Brands from Starbucks to luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton and the five-star Shangri-La hotel chain sell their own versions of the traditional gift, with some costing as much as $100 for a box of four.

A few years ago, China even ordered officials to stop handing out mooncakes as part of a crackdown on corruption.

Lots of time and effort goes into making, buying and sharing mooncakes.

Here’s what you need to know..

What is a mooncake?

When most people think of a mooncake, they think of a golden crusty pastry with a dense calorie-laden filling such as lotus paste or red bean – much like the mooncake emoji available on your phone – but they can vary in size, shape, and ingredients depending on where they are made.

“mooncakes are basically pastries, but in the old days, they were tied to offerings to the moon goddess,” Clarissa Wei, a Taiwan-based food writer and author of the new cookbook Made in Taiwan, told Al Jazeera.

“Most people think of the Cantonese style, but in Yunnan, they stuff it with rose, in Taiwan, ours is with mung bean and pork, and in Hong Kong, it’s lotus seed and maybe dried pork and salted egg yolk. But at its core, it’s a dense bite-size pastry.”

Wei says handing out mooncakes is not unlike the practice of giving fruit cakes over Christmas in many Western countries.

And much like fruit cake, mooncakes can also be divisive. For some, they are stodgy and cloyingly sweet. For others, heavenly. Mostly they are eaten in small slithers.

read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/9/28/mid-autumn-festival-asia-goes-mad-for-mooncakes

archive: https://archive.ph/EcwNx