chinese culture

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Moon cake

Mooncake is a Chinese confection that is traditionally eaten during the mid-autumn festival or commonly known as mooncake festival. Typical mooncake have either round or rectangular puck shape pastries , measurement about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. They have a relatively thin crust (2-3 mm), which surrounds a thick pasty filling and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mooncake are typically rich, heavy and dense compared to western pastries and usually eat in small portion with Chinese tea as drink.

Traditional mooncakes are typically baked and consists of a thin tender skin enveloping a sweet and slightly oily filling. The moon cake can also contain single or multiple whole salted egg

yolks in its center to symbolize the full moon. The saltiness of the yolk balances well with the sweet filling in the mooncake.

Traditional mooncakes have an imprint on top consisting of the Chinese characters for "longevity" or "harmony" as well as the name of the bakery and filling in the moon cake. Imprints of a moon, a woman on the moon, flowers, vines, or a rabbit may surround the characters for additional decoration.

Mooncake filling is depending on the region culture, different region will produce defferent type of filling. This is making people all around the word to recognize the mooncake from different region. Once eat the mooncake can determine it origin.

On the other hand, crust play an important role in making of the mooncake. There is chewy type of crust , flaky type of crust and tender type of crush. Chewy type of crust has a reddish-brown tone and glossy sheen. It is the most common type of crust in Cantonese style mooncake. Beside that, flaky type of crust are commonly use in Suzhou-style mooncake , This crust has a very similar texture to the likes of puff pastry. Tender crush are from certain province of china and Taiwan. The texture of this type of mooncake crust is similar to the likes of the shortcrust pastry used in Western pie crusts or tart shells. This is the mooncake that are exist and use when mooncake festival celebration.