Aug 28, 2005
Wasabi and other weird flavours
IF YOU think green tea and sweet potato in mooncakes are weird,
wait till you check out the unusual flavours this year.
Swensen's introduces wasabi ice cream mooncakes (right), which is
one of four flavours in its new range of chocolate-wrapped
mooncakes ($30 for four).
Emicakes bakeries' wasabi-chocolate mooncakes ($28 for four) each
have a ball of wasabi inside its chocolate filling.
Orchard Hotel's Hua Ting restaurant sells XO fragrance mooncakes
($188 for four, with Chinese tea leaves in rosewood box), made with
nuts and spicy XO sauce.
And how about this for sweet and salty: BreadTalk's Flotusss
mooncakes ($28.80 for four) contain lotus seed paste with a ball of
meat floss at the centre.
Others have gone big on alcohol. Marriott hotel offers whisky
praline snowskin mooncakes ($6 each), while Szechuan Court at
Raffles The Plaza has mini champagne truffle and ganache snowskin
mooncakes ($4.50 each).
Fullerton hotel sells chocolate Bailey's mooncakes ($13 each),
while Haagen-Dazs has gone even further, introducing three liqueur
ice-cream mooncakes ($80 for three) - rum and raisin, brandied
cherry and Bailey's Irish cream.
There's a little Japanese invasion too. Bakerzin outlets have
mooncakes with Japanese-style baked skins ($28 for eight, in four
flavours), which boast a firmer, drier crust.
PrimaDeli branches offer o'mochi mooncakes ($7.95 each), whose
pandan paste filling contains a chewy Japanese glutinous rice
ball.
The less adventurous can stick to tamer flavours. Starbucks' mango
snowskin mooncakes ($4.20 each) contain chunks of dried mango,
Goodwood Park Hotel offers cempedak snowskin mooncakes ($10.50
each), while Carlton Hotel's Wah Lok restaurant has mini walnut
mooncakes ($24 for eight).
For more options, check out the Takashimaya Mid-Autumn Festival, a
mega mooncake event to be held at Takashimaya Shopping Centre's
basement 2 from Sept 1 to 18. Supported by the Singapore Tourism
Board, it gathers 39 brands from major hotels and restaurants in
Singapore and Hong Kong, including the territory's Peninsula Hotel,
which will be selling its popular mini egg custard mooncakes ($32
for a box of eight).
