Tea-infused mooncakes to mark the Mid-Autumn Festival
Those of us familiar with Chinese mooncakes know that they are served in the Mid-Autumn Festival and are filled with red bean or lotus seed paste, and salted duck eggs. They are sliced into wedges and served with cups of tea to friends and family, ideally while viewing the full moon.
This year, the festival falls on Sept. 24 but people have been nibbling on slices of the small but heavy cakes since mid-August. They are widely available in hotels or in Binondo, but if you prefer something more indulgent, TWG Tea has come out with eight variants (four with a regular crust, four covered with mochi-like “snowskin”) available until the 24th.
All are infused with the brand’s different teas.
Constellation has a brown lotus filling flavored with Singapore Breakfast Tea, roasted melon seeds and salted egg yolk; Jewel is a favorite with its white lotus paste flavored with Chocolate Tea and dotted with chocolate chips; Harvest has brown lotus paste with Camelot Tea and assorted nuts (almonds, hazelnuts and pecans); and Ruby’s fruitcake-like consistency comes from white lotus paste with Geisha Blossom Tea’s notes of apricot and cranberry.
This year’s snowskin collection is tinted pretty pastel shades of pink, green and orange. A fourth variant, Pure, is embellished with edible gold leaf and contains smooth white lotus and lemon paste with the fruityflowery notes of White Sky Tea.
Serenity (pink) has brown lotus paste flavored with Earl Grey Fortune tea. Tangy orange marmalade picks up on the citrus notes of the tea. Jade (green) has white lotus and pistachio paste flavored with Paris-Singapore Tea with an Amarena cherry heart; and Illumination (orange) is a mix of chestnut and white lotus paste infused with Okayti Tea, crunchy chocolate pearls, and a banana and passionfruit heart.
“All the mooncakes are produced in-house but made using ingredients imported from Singapore,” said Nana Hidalgo, merchandise manager at Spe- cialty Food Retailers Inc., which also handles Saladstop and the much-anticipated Shake Shack. Even the alkaline water for the mooncakes is brought in from Singapore.
For the first time since the Singapore-based brand opened tea salons in the Philippines, it is offering tea sets with a mooncake instead of the usual cake or macarons. The Moonlight Tea Time set (P1,150) consists of tea-infused sandwiches and canapés with the guest’s choice of snowskin mooncake, available until Sept. 23.
TWGTea Salons are at Greenbelt 5 in Makati, Shangri-La Plaza in Mandaluyong and Central Square in BGC.