Mooncakes that swim with the tide

For generations, mooncakes have been made with fillings of melon seeds, nuts, lotus paste, red bean paste, and salted duck egg yolks.

As time passed, mooncakes evolved with its regional characteristics based on local foods, culture and customs. Countries such as Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam also celebrate the Mid Autumn Festival and have developed their own food traditions and mooncakes. Today, you can find mooncakes with various fillings including taro, pineapple, green tea, tiramisu or even citrus peel. The shape is always the same though; round to symbolize both the full moon and the gathering of family.

Guangzhou's mooncake version has a thick body with variety of baked and non baked skins and a variety of fillings. The most used ingredients include lotus seed paste, melon seed paste, chinese ham, mung bean paste, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, sesame seeds, almonds and egg yolks.

Beijing's mooncake style has a crispy brown skin. It features the delicate use of sweetness and meticulous decoration. The common proportion of pastry and filling for Beijing-style mooncakes is 4:6. The most used ingredient is sesame oil.

Suzhou mooncakes are well known throughout China for their layers of flaky pastry and generous allotment of sugar and lard surrounding a savory, aromatic pork filling. There are both sweet and savory.

Taiwan mooncakes are unlike normal mooncakes, the savory complement the sweetness by using different styles of concoctions:

• Sanxing Spring Onion With X.O. Sauce, White Bean Paste
• Kavalan Whisky Infused Mango, Chocolate Bean Paste
• Sundried Yilan Kumquat, Creamy Custard

The most iconic Taiwan Mooncake is perhaps the luscious mung beans, a mushroom flavor which is great for vegetarians wrapped with multi-layered flaky skin. There is also the Su Dong Po stewed pork and the Chinese pickled yolk flavor which is a real delight.

Nowadays, there are hundreds of varieties of mooncakes on sale a month before the Mid-Autumn Festival. Many new flavors have been made available in the market recently and it never stops evolving . Some well-received flavors by the mass are custard lava, durian 'musang king', vegetable and fruit mix, abalone, agarwood, ant, morinaga and shark's fin flavor.

Mooncakes manufacturers have kept on re-creating its finest mooncake recipe over the years to ultimately offer the best mooncake taste and experience. This year, it is expected to have more new flavours to be added on top of the existing huge array of flavours. We will be spoilt for choice for sure.