The Mid Autumn Festival celebrated by the Chinese all over the world was last September 19, 2013. You will know when the festival is nearing when you see mooncakes popping up everywhere.
I’m not really fond of mooncakes until I saw pictures of really unique mooncakes from Spring by Ha Yuan in Instagram. I ordered the ones that interested me and I picked them up at Ha Yuan Signatures in Greenhills Town Center.
I must confess that I’ve never eaten at Ha Yuan before. I know they’re popular for their beef maki but since I don’t like that I never went to Ha Yuan.
Asides for beef maki I also don’t like any form of lomi (thick yellow noodles) but I bought an order of their Chang Tiu Lomi which my dad wanted. Imagine my surprise when I tasted the al dente noodles which tasted nothing like the usual yellow lye-tasting lomi. The thick rich beef broth was equally pleasing. I have a new noodle dish to look forward to when the mood strikes.
Spring by Ha Yuan is run by Suzy Lee the 3rd generation in her family of restaurateurs. She’s young thus the imaginative and creative takes on Spring’s food and mooncakes. I don’t know if they still have stock of mooncakes like these on display at Ha Yuan Signatures two weeks ago. It would be good to call before you troop to their stores for mooncakes.
They had my order ready and packed in a colorful box. Three big baked and three chilled snowskin mooncakes made up my order.
Snowskin mooncakes are not baked and the outer wrapper is made from glutinous rice. This kind of mooncake is usually chilled or even frozen.
Naturally the first one I tried was the green tea which is one of my favorite flavors. At first bite the taste of green tea wasn’t that obvious but after a few minutes the flavor developed in my mouth and it lingered on. Quite pleasing!
I’ve said before that I’m not fond of cookie butter but in this mooncake the combination of spiced lotus paste with Lotus Biscoff spread center and orange snowskin was quite good. I liked how the gingerbread flavor of the spread enhanced the light orange spiked filling. I just wish the lotus cream paste was smoother.
Yes, it tasted as good as it looks. Only a wickedly clever mind could come up with a cold mooncake filled with a whole Risa chocolate truffle with a liquid salted caramel center, Himalayan sea salt lotus paste filling enrobed with chocolate snowskin. I never thought mooncake could taste so sinfully good.
Putting bacon in a sweet mooncake isn’t really as strange as it sounds. In Hong Kong most shops sell ham with nuts mooncake. The genius is using Mr. Delicious’ applewood smoked bacon which gave a smokey, salty contrast to the sweet mooncake filled with almonds, pecans, peanuts, melon seeds and sesame seeds. I always like food that are both sweet and salty. My only suggestion is to put even more nuts!!
I got a traditional black sesame mooncake with a single salted egg yolk. I thought this would be the most ordinary and the one I will like the least but it turned out to be my favorite. I just loved the black sesame filling with lots of melon seeds for crunch. The best thing though was the soft salted egg yolk which was fantastic with the sesame filling. The egg yolks in other mooncakes I’ve tried were dry and flavorless. This was was soft, oily and salty in other words PERFECT.
I saved the chocolate peanut butter mooncake for last. It was my birthday mooncake.
Mix good quality creamy peanut butter with some lotus paste and cover it with a chocolate crust and you get this gooey mooncake that will please any pb lover. The peanut butter flavor wasn’t overwhelming but you know it’s there.
My favorites in order were the black sesame, dark choco salted caramel and the bacon & nuts mooncakes. I realized that I enjoy the baked version more. Don’t get me wrong all of these mooncakes were good I just liked some more than the others.
Spring by Ha Yuan
Branches:
G/F BSA Mansion
108 Benavidez St. Legaspi Village, Makati
telephone: (02)403-1508
M-Sat 11:30 AM to 9 PM, Sun: CLOSED
G/F Venice Piazza Mall McKinley Hill, Taguig
telephone: (02)551-8316
M-Th & Sun : 11AM to 9 PM, Fri & Sat 11 AM to 10 PM
G/F Multi-level Carpark Building
UST Campus Espana, Manila
telephone: (02) 523-1071
M-F: 7 AM to 8 PM, Sat: 7 AM to 6 PM Sun: CLOSED
SOON TO OPEN AT JAZZ Residences
Ha Yuan Signatures
Greenhills Towncenter, Granada St. QC
telephone: (02)547-5557
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