This post marks my first anniversary! Which is a real feat for me given that when I started this blog, I was expecting it to fizz out in 6 months, given that I do that with most of my hobbies... mainly because I pursue them so intensely in a short period of time and understand the concepts and basics really quickly; I get bored once I feel that it's not really about learning concepts anymore and what's left is just dry repetition.
Well, I decided to come full circle by posting about mooncakes again (pardon the punny reference). Today, it's two interesting flavours by Bee Cheng Hiang - earl grey, and pandan gula melaka. It's also funny how they cornily used a grey colour for their earl grey label. (I think they used other colours for other flavours.) And, they also celebrated Singapore's Jubilee 50th birthday by printing the lion head insignia on the mooncake... so it's somewhat meaningful as my anniversary post.
Unfortunately, anniversaries and birthdays aside, both mooncakes were a disappointment... for the earl grey one, the earl grey flavour was so faint. It was just a slight whiff of earl grey fragrance as I first bit into the mooncake... I think I even had to imagine that. Thereafter, it was exactly like a normal white lotus mooncake. (It was decent as a lotus mooncake though...)
Still, earl grey was a really good idea, and I think it would do much better with a stronger earl grey fragrance. Tea flavours tend to go well with lotus for some reason.
The next was slightly better - pandan gula melaka. It looks exactly the same as the earl grey one on the outside, with the same Singapore lion head motif. I thought it was interesting because it's the first mooncake I saw which separated its flavours in two layers. Most mooncakes with two elements have an inner ball of the first flavoured paste in the middle, wrapped around by a second flavoured paste on the outside.
The flavours were more discernible for this, but still very weak. The pandan flavour was much fainter than the pandan mooncakes by Bengawan Solo, but it was there and they got the taste right - how badly can you screw up pandan though?
The gula melaka tasted slightly salty, which was very nice, because along with the pandan, it was like the chendol dessert concept.
Unfortunately, though, because both flavours were so weak, I really didn't get much of a chendol flavour at all. It was mainly sweet and faintly lotus-paste-like. The paste was so weakly flavoured that the wheaty taste of the pastry was too prominent, so I didn't like that. (Somehow the overall flavour of the paste was weaker than the lotus taste in the earl grey mooncake.) Bee Cheng Hiang certainly doesn't execute their flavoured mooncakes very well.
Or maybe it was an experiment gone wrong, because they had these on promo, whereas their black sesame mooncakes were going for normal price - about $10 each. These two flavours though were relatively cheap owing to a promotion - about $8 per piece... so I suppose even if you purchased the earl grey mooncakes as lotus mooncakes, they would still be quite value for money. I suppose I could think of it as a lotus mooncake with a bonus whiff of earl grey fragrance haha.
Finally, I really liked their box. It was simple and minimalist in terms of the material - just a plain dark brown box with a cardboard sleeve, compared to most other places which use metal, wooden or thicker boxes with things popping out of them. What was classy was the sleeve, which was golden. It's possibly my favourite mooncake box in along while.
Unfortunately, anniversaries and birthdays aside, both mooncakes were a disappointment... for the earl grey one, the earl grey flavour was so faint. It was just a slight whiff of earl grey fragrance as I first bit into the mooncake... I think I even had to imagine that. Thereafter, it was exactly like a normal white lotus mooncake. (It was decent as a lotus mooncake though...)
Still, earl grey was a really good idea, and I think it would do much better with a stronger earl grey fragrance. Tea flavours tend to go well with lotus for some reason.
The flavours were more discernible for this, but still very weak. The pandan flavour was much fainter than the pandan mooncakes by Bengawan Solo, but it was there and they got the taste right - how badly can you screw up pandan though?
The gula melaka tasted slightly salty, which was very nice, because along with the pandan, it was like the chendol dessert concept.
Unfortunately, though, because both flavours were so weak, I really didn't get much of a chendol flavour at all. It was mainly sweet and faintly lotus-paste-like. The paste was so weakly flavoured that the wheaty taste of the pastry was too prominent, so I didn't like that. (Somehow the overall flavour of the paste was weaker than the lotus taste in the earl grey mooncake.) Bee Cheng Hiang certainly doesn't execute their flavoured mooncakes very well.
Or maybe it was an experiment gone wrong, because they had these on promo, whereas their black sesame mooncakes were going for normal price - about $10 each. These two flavours though were relatively cheap owing to a promotion - about $8 per piece... so I suppose even if you purchased the earl grey mooncakes as lotus mooncakes, they would still be quite value for money. I suppose I could think of it as a lotus mooncake with a bonus whiff of earl grey fragrance haha.
Finally, I really liked their box. It was simple and minimalist in terms of the material - just a plain dark brown box with a cardboard sleeve, compared to most other places which use metal, wooden or thicker boxes with things popping out of them. What was classy was the sleeve, which was golden. It's possibly my favourite mooncake box in along while.
Want to see other interesting mooncake flavours? Check out other unusual mooncakes here!
Comments
Post a Comment