As the mooncake season is already in full bloom, we have decided to enter round two of the Mid-Autumn Festival. With so many hotels and cafes offering beautiful and extremely creative treats, our mooncake tastings are getting increasingly exciting.
1 The Connoisseur Concerto (TCC)
The Connoisseur Concerto (TCC) café chain offers a variety of curious mooncake combinations, including alcoholic, non-alcoholic, and traditional creations. We chose a box of eight snow skin mooncakes, half of which were alcohol-fuelled.
First up was the Crème de Oreo, which offers exactly what you would expect from Oreos – a delicious creamy taste. The Osmanthus Yuzu was quite light in taste, but very refreshing, while also offering a citrusy feel. The Choco Hazelnut mooncake was very rich and intense, having a little bit of roasted taste to it. Completing the non-alcoholic treats, the Yuki Kuro Goma was truly a sesame bomb with white chocolate at its core.
If that weren’t already enough flavours, the four alcohol-fuelled mooncakes were even more intense and rich. While the Baileys Amore offers light coffee flavours, the Caramello Whiskey Truffle is slightly more liquid than the others and has a strong smoked whisky taste. The Earl Grey Kirsch was unexpectedly citrusy, while the classic Rum V Raisin mooncake was beautifully balanced, swaying between sweet and bitter. The mooncake box from TCC is definitely worth your while if you are an explorer of flavours.
2 Sheraton Hotel
Handcrafted by award-winning chef Chung Yiu Ming and his team, we explored the Sheraton’s creative mooncakes that came with mixed nuts and X.O. sauce. It almost didn’t taste like a mooncake, as the strong and intense X.O. sauce is very overpowering. While the nuts offer a comfortable crunchy and chewy sensation, the sauce provides a strong reminiscence of seafood, making it usually spicy for a mooncake. This one is truly special and made for lovers of strong flavours.
3 Fullerton Hotel
Besides the traditional baked mooncakes, the Fullerton also offers a variety of snow skins, including their signature called Pandan with Gula Melaka. Quite creamy in feel with a rich coconut flavour, the wasn’t too sweet.
Being a lover of anything with adzuki beans, the Tangerine Lemon with Matcha Red Bean Paste was a welcome addition to the Fullerton’s mooncake selection. Cutting the mooncake in half, one is presented with quite a mix of colours – pink on the outside, matcha green in the middle and lemony yellow at the centre.
The orange and chocolate mooncake offered a rather strong and almost creamy orange-flavoured paste in combination with crunchy chocolate balls, while the white snow skin mooncake came with the traditional lotus seed paste and egg yolk.
4 Antoinette
Antoinette is a royal French café offers not only a beautiful and creative box of mini snowskin mooncakes, but also mooncake macaroons. Indulging on a box of the former, we were already entertained by cutting the mooncakes in half. Not sure if it was intended, but when cutting them one actually guillotines Marie Antoinette, who is pictured on top.
First up on the feast was a pitch-black treat with white lotus paste and salted egg truffle at its core. Not too sweet, the white chocolate combines surprisingly well with the salted egg.
Intensely green and matcha-enriched on the outside, the next object of desire offered a chestnut-flavoured lotus paste with white chocolate matcha truffle. While the flavour is very rich, it is also quite creamy. One tastes a little bitterness at first, but it balances with a slight overall sweetness. The chestnut paste was not too nutty, having also a slight sweetness to it.
Offering a mix of white and milk chocolate flavour on the outside, this low sugar treat comes with white lotus paste and dark chocolate truffle at its core. The chocolate truffle on the inside is very strong and intense, while the white lotus paste, holding the chocolate truffle at the centre, is surrounded by stronger flavours. Offering notes of peach as an aftertaste, this one was not very sweet, but very soft in taste.
Pinkish in colour, the mooncake treat filled with longan goji berries and cashew nuts has a curios salty taste, offering a nice balance between with the slightly stronger sweetness.
With a soft chocolate colour on the outside, the last mooncake was a pure chocolate bomb. The dark chocolate lotus paste was mixed with crunchy chocolate pearls, giving it a little more texture than the other ones.
5 Holiday Inn
While the Holiday Inn’s special mooncake flavours, Osmanthus Oolong and Green Tea, were temporarily not available at the time of our visit, we decided to try their baked mooncake with a four-yolk white lotus seed paste. The creamy paste was not too heavy or too sweet, making it a well-rounded treat that will suit most tastes.
6 Peony Jade
Located at Clarke Quay, Peony Jane is a traditional and award-winning restaurant also offers mooncakes that critics love every year again. Choosing one of their new and healthier creations, this baked mooncake was enriched with turmeric, while offering a ginger and lemongrass white lotus paste.
The very first bite offered a strong turmeric-flavoured sensation, but the lemongrass hint remains as a lasting aftertaste. Only slightly sweet, this mooncake offers quite a different palette than most seasonal treats.
Travelling, eating, and drinking his way through life, Peter is continuously hungry for more. Always looking something new and exciting every single day, his day starts before the sunrise and ends longer after the sunset.
