Betty Liu, a cookbook author from California, grew up in a neighbourhood with numerous Chinese bakeries, but she was unable to depend on them to fulfil her mooncake needs.
Most of them only sold the traditional moulded Cantonese mooncake, according to her. She grew up in Shanghai, where mooncakes are flaky and round, and filled with delicious pork. Alternatively, Cantonese mooncakes are thick pastries in the form of hockey pucks with soft, chewy crusts.
Even though the recipe for the pork mooncakes came from Ms. Liu’s mother and was based on recollections of the ones she had eaten while growing up in China, some people accused her of being unauthentic when she shared them on Instagram. “I had such a few of comments along the lines of: ‘These aren’t mooncakes. Do not pass them off as mooncakes,'” Ms. Liu cautioned the public. They, on the other hand, were solely acquainted with the Cantonese manner.”
Despite the fact that the Cantonese version is the most well-known throughout the world, there is no fixed recipe for the pastry. “We stuff it with ham where we reside. The dish is a speciality of the province of Yunnan, in southern China, where Dong Meihua lives in the countryside. Ms. Dong, who is known on YouTube as Dianxi Xiaoge and who creates famous culinary videos, prepares her mooncakes using handmade aged ham that has been flavoured with honey. The result of cooking them in a charcoal oven is that they are pillowy and spherical, reminiscent of golden orbs.
If the goal of a mooncake is to showcase the finest of an area, the ingredients used will always be up for debate. According to Ms. Cho, it doesn’t really matter what form or size it is. In the Chinese culture, a mooncake is something tiny and delicious that may be shared with your closest loved ones.
