Creative moon cake varieties offer a colorful array of different flavors for upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival, which is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month on China’s lunar calendar, falls on Sept. 21 this year. Although the festival is still several days away, moon cakes, a kind of symbolic food eaten on the occasion, are already on people’s minds.

Photo shows moon cakes sold at a supermarket. (Chinanews.com/Han Zhangyun)

Traditionally, moon cakes are mainly stuffed with a sweet paste. This year, some moon cake sellers have continued to roll out moon cakes with an increasingly exotic array of fillings, such as salmon and mustard moon cakes as well as crayfish flavored ones.

A pepper and chili soup company based in central China’s Henan province has rolled out a moon cake with a filling that combines the ingredients used in pepper and chili soup, the new flavor making many shoppers raise their eyebrows. The ingredients labelling on the package indicates that the moon cake is also stuffed with mushroom sauce, cordyceps militaris and black fungus.

The moon cake is sold for 21 yuan ($3.27) per piece, and the vendor says that there are only 300 boxes for sale on its online shop. As the moon cake went viral online, it sparked discussions among Chinese netizens, with some saying they want to have a taste of it while others thinking it is not worth a try.

Photo shows moon cakes stuffed with ingredients used in pepper and chili soup rolled out by a company in Zhengzhou, central China’s Henan province. (Chinanews.com/Liu Peng)

Creative moon cakes can always find their market niche among younger people, who are usually always keen on trying out new things. At a supermarket in Zhengzhou, capital city of Henan, a number of foodies were seen queuing up to buy a variety of moon cakes with unconventional fillings. However, in the eyes of conservative consumers, these moon cakes would probably taste just like steamed stuffed buns.

A young woman nicknamed Xiao Yu said some moon cakes with exotic fillings actually taste like meat pies and so they cannot technically be called moon cakes in fact. But according to a vendor, these creative moon cakes have been enjoying good sales, pointing to one moon cake stuffed with ham and dried meat floss that has been out of stock as just one example to illustrate her point.

Photo (from top to bottom) shows moon cakes stuffed with crab meat and pork, moon cakes stuffed with mustard and salmon, and moon cakes stuffed with pork and crayfish meat. (Chinanews.com/Han Zhangyun)

Xie Dongdong, a teacher of food science and technology with the Henan University of Technology expressed that the innovative moon cakes reflect progress in food engineering, satisfying people’s demand for high-quality moon cakes, and conforming to the trends of the market as they enrich the variety of moon cakes choices available for people to choose from.

A consumer buys moon cakes from a vender. (Chinanews.com/Han Zhangyun)