Mooncakes now and then

When the Mid-Autumn Festival came, her mother bought one bánh nướng (the baked mooncake) and one bánh dẻo (the snowy glutinous cake). They were saved on the 15th night of the eighth lunar month when the moon was roundest and brightest. Her whole family consumed the cakes, piece by piece, over the course of the following week

Out of her perpetual desire for this annual treat, Tham sought out a mundane biscuit and pretended to divide up her imagined treat. Her unpracticed knife slipped on the harder cookie and cut deep.

The mooncake market is heating up these days

When Tham—now a mother herself who can buy her two children as many mooncakes as they like—considers her resulting scar, she is reminded of her childish wish to eat a whole mooncake by herself.

The smell and sight of mooncakes conjures the sounds and excitement of the special annual holiday in the minds of Vietnamese children. From Mid-Autumn Festival to Mid-Autumn Festival, anticipation only builds.

Modern,mooncakes are much more affordable and widely available. One month prior to the Mid-Autumn Festival, red stores pop up at every street corner displaying a diverse array of options. Their fancy packaging is specifically designed to serve as luxurious gifts.  

New fillings are invented every year to satisfy consumer tastes. Mooncakes with shark fin or swallow’s nest are no longer unusual, but the most popular remain the traditional tastes of green bean paste, lotus seeds, and salted pork.

As more and more businesses enter the mooncake market, competition gets fiercer every year. Bakeries, restaurants, hotels, and even seasonal private enterprises are now mooncake producers. The choices are endless.

Food hygiene concerns and waves of advertising have turned consumers away from home-made mooncakes in favour of factory-produced varieties. Household businesses that might have made and sold mooncakes for generations cannot compete with the resources and manpower of major companies. Preservatives are a factor too, with many unwilling to risk the unpredictable humidity ruining their gifts.

But the old-fashioned, traditional homemade businesses have mounted resurgence. Some family businesses have won hearts by remaining free of preservatives and selling fresher and safer mooncakes. Mothers equipping themselves with electric ovens and convenient baking tools are starting to make mooncakes themselves.

Tham managed to teach herself following internet recipes and spent a Sunday afternoon with her children making mooncakes. Many things might have changed, her own passion for mooncakes may have faded, but Tham is intent on ensuring her own children enjoy the same soft and sweet mooncake memories that she still treasures.