The bakers keeping traditional mooncake making alive in Hong Kong for Mid-Autumn Festival

A treat families once took a year to pay for, mooncakes of every flavour are ubiquitous now. Some are still made fresh the old-fashioned way

Reading Time:4 minutes

Vivian Leung prepares to bake mooncakes made the traditional way using ingredients sourced in Hong Kong for charity Locofarms. Photo: Locofarms

Published: 12:45pm, 17 Sep 2024Updated: 10:29am, 24 Sep 2024

Take a bite out of history with our exclusive series on the delicious ingredients, dishes and techniques behind the unique tastes of Hong Kong.

Snow skin, durian, ice cream, even Chinese ham – no matter what your preference, there is likely a mooncake out there for you.

For ancient China’s agrarian society, the Mid-Autumn Festival was a celebration of a successful harvest. Today, it is a day where families gather and mooncakes are given to one’s nearest and dearest – as well as to business partners and corporate clients.

Traditionally eaten relatively fresh, mooncakes are big business. In 2023, Hong Kong charity Food Grace estimated that households in Hong Kong planned to buy, on average, 1.8 boxes of mooncakes; that amounts to about five million boxes a year.

This has led to the mass manufacturing of the seasonal treats, some of them sourced from outside Hong Kong to meet demand.

KC Koo is the owner of Hong Kong food company Fancook. He sells a line of mooncakes containing salted egg yolk with yellow lotus paste. Photo: SCMP

Mooncakes have not always been as affordable as they are today. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the standard of living of the average Hong Kong family was relatively low, payment plans called mooncake clubs were set up so that people could buy them.

SCMP Series

Chinese food culture

[ 2 of 8 ]