Mooncake Mockup

One of the best mooncakes...ever

 

Ice cream. I could eat it all day--breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in-between meals. I wish I could live in a house made of ice cream... but I would eat myself out of house and home.

Imagine how mouth-wateringly pleased I was to discover this variation on the seasonal specialty called mooncake. Instead of the traditional glazed pastry, often stuffed with lotus seed paste and egg yolk, this one was made of flan, green tea and green rice ice creams, and a "yolk" made of mango sorbet.

The flan was set in a mold that gave it the characteristic relief and detail of a real mooncake, and the top received a sprinkling of praline nuts. One slice of whole shebang revealed the mango-ey yolk and the layers of green and creamy white ice cream.

Not to let this ice cream mooncake stand alone on its own merit, the ice cream artists made a spectacular serving presentation. They placed this mooncake mockup on a banana leaf atop a wooden tray. They built a lotus flower out of white chocolate, spread sliced strawberries around the edges of the banana leaf, and drizzled syrup and candied ginger around the lot. For the additional touch of class, the whole thing was served with a pot of fragrant jasmine iced tea, complete with a thimble-sized cup.

For most of my life, my favorite ice cream pretender was the whattamelon roll. It's a slice of watermelon and lime sherbet, with chocolate chips throughout, made to look like a slice of summertime heaven. But not anymore. This ice cream variant of the mid-autumn festival specialty totally takes the cake.

Tết Trung Thu - Mid-Autumn Festival

Today's full moon marks the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. This moon marks a major holiday in many Asian cultures. In Vietnam, the holiday is called Tết Trung Thu.

I used to think that Tết meant the lunar new year. Actually, the new year is called Tết Nguyên Đán. I found out that there are four traditional holidays in Vietnam called Tết. The others are the lantern festival on the full moon of the first month, and the mid-year festival on the fifth day of the fifth month, called Tết Nguyên Tiêu and Tết Đoan ngọ respectively.

In Vietnam, the mid-autumn festival is a celebration of children. In the evening, parents fawn over their kids, give them presents, and feed them rich and savory sweets. They eat square mooncakes filled with seeds, dried fruits and dried meats. Together, families bring tea, wine or mooncakes to relatives, then venture outside to sing, light lanterns, watch lion dances, and admire the full harvest moon. In the moon, people say they can see a person who, according to folklore, was carried there tangled in the roots of a sacred banyan tree. Whether this person was a man or a woman is unclear to me.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!