If not for those of you who sent me some last year here and here, I would not have had any…for the simple reason that they were way too expensive and I would not want to spend my money buying those extravagantly-expensive mooncakes to eat. After all, I am not really crazy about those and I really do not think it would be worth it at all.
Well, we are into the 2nd half of the 7th month and the Mooncake or Lantern or Mid-Autumn Festival will be here soon – on the 12th of September, to be exact. I have seen some blog posts such as this one on those available this year and horror of horrors! The prices range from around RM70 to RM100 or more per box of 4. Good grief! With that kind of money, I can go out with my missus and even bring a couple of friends along for a sumptuous dinner at a restaurant in town and that would definitely be a whole lot more to everyone’s satisfaction. Even this American branded-coffee franchise is jumping on the bandwagon.
Well, I don’t know if any of you are going out to buy any of those or not but I, for one, will definitely not be doing any such thing. Incidentally, whoever may be thinking of giving me any this year, for heaven’s sake, please don’t. Better save the money to buy me dinner when we get to meet one another.
Actually, we have some pretty nice local-made ones at some of the bakeries here like these, for instance…
The guy used to work at a hotel here before he ventured out to open his own bakery and for RM8.50, I can get 6 of these…
…with some very nice pandan paste and salted egg inside…
The skin is also pretty well-done and one thing’s for sure, these are a whole lot more affordable.
These are cheaper…
…at only RM5.00 for 6 with white bean-paste filling…
…but personally, I feel the skin is a bit too thick and not as great and the bean paste (which looks a lot darker than usual) is too sweet and not to my liking. I think I would just stick to the former…mainly with the sole objective of keeping our culture and tradition alive, more than anything else.
If I remember correctly, I’ve seen those “imported” from the peninsula in the shops and supermarkets as early as the beginning of this month, if not sometime last month. By the time, the festival comes around, they would be some two to three months old already…and I really wonder how much preservative would be needed to keep them from going bad in the meantime. It certainly makes more sense to buy our local-made ones even though they may not be so exquisite, so exceptionally nice…but at least, they’ve just come out fresh from the oven…and they’re cheap. What do you all think?
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 