> > > I thought moon pies were those *horrible* Chinese soft dumpling thingies with beans inside, that you get on the Eighth Moon festival? But surely Wolfspirit would have heard of them if so. Maybe they're translated differently elsewhere.
> >
> > Those are supposed to be "moon cakes." They're made for the Autumn Harvest Moon festival (the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar), right. The cake contents are: candied nuts like watermelon and lotus seeds; candied peel; red-bean paste or lotus-seed paste, with half a cooked duck's egg in the middle. Is this what you mean by "horrible soft dumplings", or is that something else? Moon cakes are brown and glazed with egg yolk pastry, and the whole thing is actually quite firm in texture whilst simultaneously crumbly.
> >
> > Personally, I dislike moon cakes -- they look extravagant but taste boring. I'll bet they can keep for months in a tropical climate, though, which is probably why they're "traditional".
>
> Oh, right! Moon cakes. I've had the sort with the bean paste (which were home-made ones), and a commercial sort with the cooked egg inside. The home-made ones were soft, but considering they were made by small children, they may not have been entirely the way they were intended ... you have to be polite about these things, though. ;-)On the other hand, they tasted a lot better than the commercial variety.

Why the heck would anyone make any sort of cake with a bean paste?! That just sounds wrong. Cakes are sweet, fluffy, moist, and spongelike. Bean paste just sounds... ucky. The concept is lost on me; it doesn't seem remotely dessertesque.

Tra "Garçon!... I'll just have the flan, thanks." nio