The Mid-Autumn Festival is a popular observance in Malaysia amongst the Chinese heritage, it’s the second most important festival after Chinese New Year. It traditionally falls on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, which is in September or early October. For this year 2020, the Mid–Autumn Festival will fall on October 1st (Thursday). It is the same day as China National Day.

Mooncakes, a round rich pastry typically filled with lotus paste, are traditionally eaten during the festival. The festival celebrates three fundamental concepts that are closely connected:

• Gathering, such as family and friends coming together, or harvesting crops for the festival. It is said the moon is the brightest and roundest on this day which means family reunion.
• Thanksgiving, to give thanks for the harvest, or for harmonious unions.

Legend has it that mooncakes are stuffed with secret messages, which were passed along to start a rebellion in China under the rule of the Mongols.

While the Cantonese Lotus Paste baked mooncake or snowskin mooncake are more commonly eaten in Malaysia, we at D’FUN Cookies beg to differ baking a time-honoured recipe – the Traditional Teochew Muichoy Mooncakes. Ours are handmade, each batch only 20 pieces made at a time. To ensure the mooncakes are perfectly baked, each steps are handled very carefully and with lots of love plus hardwork. The skill of cutting the ingredients into tiny pieces ensures the perfect balance of sweet and savoury, with aromatic fragrant that is not overpowering. The dough is also time consuming and need much skills as it is made from water dough and oil dough.

D’FUN Cookies Teochew Muichoy Mooncakes will surprise you with its delectable filling of Candied Mandarin Orange, Chicken Meat Floss, Lotus Paste, and Mui Choy, or molded ‘Preserved Vegetables’ embedded within. Moving away from the conventional flaky skin type of regular Teo Chew Yam Mooncakes, our filling is also wrapped with a crisp and firm crust, topped with beautiful patterns of Melon and Sesame seed on the surface. The beauty and symmetry of such pattern on top of the mooncake reflects the significance of wholeness and completion, which symbolises the importance of familial togetherness in Chinese culture.

D’FUN Cookies is committed to bake handmade cookies, biscuits and delicacies for all walks of life.  We do not want to lose the culinary history and Chinese culture, yet we market them using the latest technology – Online Order and Delivery at www.dfuncookies.com.my.  Although I’m as a Cantonese, I want to bake these mooncake to be an eye-opener to the Teochews and especially for the younger generations.  And most importantly, we priced our mooncakes humbly for all walks of life. Each box of mooncake is only RM40 for 4 pieces packed in a pretty box, each mooncake individually wrapped.

The recipe is a handed over to me by a very close friend at the age of 68 years old to try on and perfecting them.  My friend had collected many mooncakes recipes through the years and had never got the chance yet to bake this recipe although she loves eating them.  Thus I’m extremely lucky as the beneficiary of this time-honoured recipe from Hong Kong, baking them for all those who love to eat special food and love to know our Chinese culture.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 2020!  [Dato’ Fun]