It's interesting that most families don't make them unless they want to make money from them...but damn are they expensive too....to buy that is.

We have 韭菜 chinese chives in our garden, so when there's soo much that we don't know what else we could do with them we often choose to make a whole bunch of dumplings, we buy the skins, because we're not good at rolling them, use the chinese chives in an almost equal proportion to the minced meat we use, flavour the fillings, then spend a night making the dumplings. We don't cook them all at once though, we freeze at least half of what we make raw, then cook the rest for that night's dinner.

meh... my family do not make those traiditional food...
dumplings for this or for that.
Not that any of us have special liking for those food.

Most people don't make moon cakes unless they're in the mooncake making business...that's the impression I have.

My mum learnt, and got the equipment needed several years ago, she's been making them on and off for a few years.

Each year for 端午节 Dragonboat Festival, she'd also make 粽子 zongzi, the tetrahedral shaped ones.

Yeah...I guess it's because mooncakes are so tedious to make so most people don't bother making them unless they're going to sell them for money.

Mooncakes are not one of my favourite traditional Chinese foods either. And they are tedious to make, maybe the reason for the high price tag, along with the fancy boxes.

Here, they're sold in tin boxes of four most of the time, although you could get individual ones too, I think. The boxes do come in handy for storing other stuff...

There's also the pineapple crisps (鳳梨酥) or whatever they're called in English...they're okay to eat from time to time, though I've heard that a lot of them aren't made with real pineapples because those are more costly ingredients. >.>

I'm not sure if I've had those before, are they sort of flat, round with the pineapple flavoured filling...and the biscuit is sort of flakey?

The flakey, biscuit kind. :)

There're round and rectangle types, depending on how the stores make them.

Hrm...they do look tasty, but looking at the images I don't think I've had anything like that. But if they're packaged, they're probably something that I could find in Asian groceries.

I think the pineapple biscuit I had is the one Lingling described.
I don't recall seeing the ones Antata showed...

Anyway, down to my generation, we don't know how to make year cake, soup round(maybe only know how to roll it...), moon cake, zongzi... oh well, at least we know what they are and what they taste like.

Must admit I wouldn't know how to make either of those foods either....no one in our family knows how to make year cake...soup rounds I think would be simple enough, at least the ones without the filling...moon cakes and zongzi are whole day jobs, because they're the type of foods you need to make in bulk. Funnily enough, my mum told me she only learnt to make zongzi from a friend soon after coming here...

I don't even know moon cake are the type of food HAVE to make in bulk... O__O
Why so?

well, it's kind of like making cookies...it would be hard to get the proportion of the ingredients right to create the single cookie, so what you do, is make a whole batch. Same reason for moon cakes, only it's a much more tedious process, which for my mum, took two days. And that was only because she had the sugar syrup which is used to make the moon cake dough ready to use from the previous time she made them. Apparently just making that sugar syrup is a huge task in itself because it is best left for a certain period after making it before you use it in the moon cakes.

But one piece of mooncake is much more filling than one piece of cookie...

Haha, I once ate a whole 5 nut mooncake...dunno why, but it was one of the silliest things I've ever done....felt so sick afterwards...lol

... Why sick? Too full or the flavour is just tooo strong?

Too rich, and filling, to have a whole one in one go.

I remembered there was once there is such chocolate mooncake.
I was so happy, but when I eat it... it disappointed me.
I thought the filling IS chocolate, but it turns out to be the bean paste. Hardly taste any chocolate... -__-;;

Aww, that sucks, similar thing happened to me recently too...there is a shop here that sells these little cake/bun with fillings. Most of the fillings are tasty, custard, coconut, chocolate (which is chocolate custard) and there's also red bean...which is the one I don't like...Last time I went there I asked for two flavours, custard and chocolate, and what did they do? give me a red bean one instead of the chocolate...that annoyed me not only because I don't like red bean ones, but also because red bean ones are cheaper in price than the chocolate one... Unfortunately I didn't have time to go back to complain/demand a refund/replacement or any of that....ah well...

Whaa~ That is unlucky!
You paid the chocolate price? :/ I hope it is not intentional.

Little bun with fillings...
I prefer plain bun. Mantou!

Mmm chocolate. *drools*

Nephilala like chocolate?

Most certainly. Trying to avoid sweets and bread lately though.

They call them buns, but they're not like steamed bread buns, they're more like cakes/waffle taste...but yes, I was annoyed that they gave me the cheaper and not as tasty filling but I can imagine it being an easy mistake to make, because they're fully enclosed and you don't know exactly what you'er getting until you bite/open it.

May I ask why Nephila is avoiding sweets and breads?

This is a really neat thread.
-Bookmarks it-