Celebrate Tuesday’s Full Moon with Chinese Mooncakes: Jasmine Mangalaseril

In the Chinese lunar calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month. This is when the full moon appears, usually around the autumn equinox.

For those who follow the Gregorian calendar, the holiday falls in mid-September and early October. This year, it will be Tuesday, September 17.

“It’s more like Thanksgiving in Western culture,” said Yan Li, who is active in Waterloo Region’s Chinese community.

“Our family members get together and just celebrate and worship the moon. So we also call the Mid-Autumn Festival the Moon Festival.”

Here’s how to fill and decorate mooncakes

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on September 17, the day of the super harvest moon. Some members of the Waterloo Region Chinese community share mooncakes on this day to make wishes. For this reason, the festival is also called the Mooncake Festival. Qirui Zhang demonstrates how to stuff mooncakes with ham filling.

Although families eat the meal at home, for many the real celebration takes place outdoors.

When they see the low moon, they thank the Moon Goddess, Chang’e, for the harvest by reciting poems and lighting candles. They exchange wishes while sharing mooncakes. For this reason, the festival is also called the Mooncake Festival.

Mooncake filled with ham — Mooncakes vary by region. They are exchanged by people celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival to wish each other well. (Jasmine Mangalaseril/CBC)

According to Li, Chang’e was once a beautiful woman who drank the elixir of life and flew to the moon. In some versions of the story, because the harvest moon shone brighter, her husband felt she was watching over him. To honor her, he put her favorite foods outside for her to see.

Dinner as diverse as the people

China is diverse, with 56 official ethnic groups living in a country almost as large as Canada. As a result, holiday dinner traditions are as diverse as local crops and traditions, including:

Nanking Osmanthus Duck is stewed, marinated and dried duck, simmered in a broth with ginger, onion and star anise, and seasoned with osmanthus flowers.
In Hong Kong, it’s water caltrop season, and the nuts taste a bit like roasted chestnuts. They bring prosperity and cleverness.
Pomelo is believed to be Chang’e’s favorite fruit, which is why in Meizhou it is believed to bring blessings.

Gratitude for the harvest

When Li’s mother, Qirui Zhang, was a girl in Yunnan province in the 1950s, the village held a mooncake festival. Local crops like peanuts, pears, pomegranates and yellow string beans were laid out on an outdoor harvest table. People recited poetry and lit candles before a large mooncake was brought out.

A Chinese woman in a white shirt stands next to her mother, who is wearing a traditional blue and white Chinese dress. A plate of mooncakes sits on the counter. — Yan Li (left) and her mother Qirui Zhang continue the Yunnan tradition of making their own mooncakes, either by hand or using a decorative mold. (Jasmine Mangalaseril/CBC)

“They will make a huge, round mooncake that will be exactly the same as the moon,” Zhang said, according to Li’s interpretation.

“The whole village will come and share, because then we can cut it into pieces. Everyone has a little piece, then they feel blessed.”

Mooncakes are a dense dough that can be chewy, flaky, crumbly or flaky and fit in the palm of your hand. In addition to the traditional round shape, there are rectangular and square ones. Homemade ones can be shaped by hand or in decorative mooncake molds.

Li explained that the traditional, round mooncake is important.

“We create the shape of the moon so that the goddess knows that when we shape it, we will honor her.”

Regional differences

Although manufacturers release mooncakes filled with a variety of fillings, including strawberries, chocolate, or peanuts, they were originally solid cookies.

There are several regional styles, including:

Suzhou style: puff pastry with sweet, floral or savory filling.
Cantonese style: soft, with sweet or savoury fillings such as lotus seed paste, coconut paste, egg yolks or meat.
Chaoshan style: crispy and flaky, often stuffed with seafood.
Beijing style: crispy pastry with sweet filling.

Yunnan Style Mooncakes

When visiting family, Zhang passes on traditions to the family, including baking mooncakes.

A woman rolls out dough by hand to make mooncakes. — Qirui Zhang shapes traditional Yunnan-style mooncake filled with ham with her hands. (Jasmine Mangalaseril/CBC)

For regular cookies, which are like shortbread cookies, she mixes steamed flour with oil, water and brown sugar. She shapes the dough in pans and bakes them.

She also makes Yunnan ham mooncakes, which are flaky, handmade pincushion-like pastries filled with smoked ham, walnuts and brown sugar. They are sprinkled with sesame seeds and loose-leaf tea before baking.

“She tries to preserve traditions,” Li said. “So every time she does something, she just copies it from memory and then has a celebration. She’s so happy that her grandchildren, even though they were born here, can still enjoy the moment.”